Edmodo: An Authentic Social Media Platform Outside ELT classrooms

🤔    What was your first thought / impression when you see Figure 1 below?

(Figure 1 - Edmodo interface)

For me, I thought it was Facebook at first glance! Yet, 💡 Edmodo💡 is a SAFE and FREE SOCIAL MEDIA platform in the 21^st century, comprising Facebook-friendly interface for teachers and students to share everyday ELT-related issues INSIDE and OUTSIDE school.

 

How does Edmodo work?

Step 1.    Register a new account with your email address.

Step 2.    Create

After that, you can start writing notes, assigning homework tasks, creating quizzes and polls, as well as sharing files, photos and videos with students outside classroom.

Interesting Pedagogical Facts / Positive Comments of Edmodo

This video has suggested many great ideas on how to maximize the use of Edmodo in Hong Kong primary English as a second language classrooms! Enjoy! 😄

(Source: YouTube )

Friendly reminder: Press FULL SCREEN before watching the clip 😉

1.     Safe and healthy social media network

In Hong Kong, if primary school students want to engage in social media network, parents and teachers are advised to monitor and educate them about internet safety. Edmodo is a safe platform removing all advertisement and enabling you to keep track on students’ activity record. For example, the number of students logged in, interacted or submitted assignments. Also, no one can join the class unless they have the 6-digit access code.

2.     Latest updates to students

It is normal that some students are easily absent-minded or absent from school. In that case, Edmodo is a real-life and authentic platform for you to communicate with students outside classrooms. For example, you can post a short summary or recap of today’s English lesson in addition to a friendly reminder of the assigned homework. Meanwhile, students can respond with a “Like” or “Reply” after reading the posts.

3.     A bridge for better teacher-parent relationship

In a big class of 27-33 students, you may have difficulties in informing all parents about their children’s learning progress or academic performance. Meanwhile, it is believed that a strong and positive relationship between parents and teachers will maximize the interest of our students. In that case, Edmodo serves as a daily discussion forum for you to update homework checklist, inform assessment days, schedule parents’ meeting and respond to parents’ queries.

4.     Personalized ELT platform

As mentioned earlier, the interface of Edmodo is similar to Facebook and they are likely to learn engagingly in a familiar atmosphere. To personalize their account, students can upload profile pictures and write a description about themselves. In case some students encounter challenges in doing homework, they will not be afraid to initiate a discussion topic, inviting peer discussion, as well as receiving scaffolding and advice from the teacher.

Limitations 

1.     Communication platform

Edmodo allows students to communicate as a whole class. However, teachers may not be able to cater individual needs, interests and abilities right away when there is no private chat room available. In that case, you may ‘Create a group’ (See Figure 2 below) in accordance to students’ abilities.

(Figure 2 - Create a group for students with different levels of abilities)

2.     Inconvenient record tracing

Unlike Moodle and blogs, teachers and students can hardly trace each other’s posts in an organized and easy way. If your class has a lot of posts at the same time, you can filter them by authors or by types (See figure 3 below). Unfortunately, if you want to search a particular post at a specific date, then the only way is to keep scrolling down the page after filtering the posts.

 

(Figure 3 - Filter posts by authors or type)

HEY! I hope YOU have gained some inspiration after BLOGGING my new post!

💭  What are your instant thoughts and feelings towards💡 Edmodo💡 ? 

Please feel free to 💬 / ✍  / 📧  below!

More updates will be available next week! Have an insightful Friday to all ELT teachers! 😄