Searching through some twitter posts I saw a retweet from edmodo which was posted by my friends at teachers 2.0. So I was curious to see what edmodo is. So I found out by exploring Edmodo. Edmodo is a social networking site for teachers and students. Edmodo has a user interface that looks very familiar to the dark blue social networking site. This site is for teachers and students to have a safe environment to collaborate outside of the classroom.
A benefit with Edmodo for a teacher is you can communicate with your students about topics in your classroom outside of the traditional brick and mortar classroom. There is a posting option for teachers if they have a question you can ask it with multiple choice answers so your students who are on Edmodo can answer. Edmodo could be useful for teachers post their assignments online for the student to receive. You could use Edmodo for extra credit, if you had an article that you wanted the students to read and comment on it you could have them do so on Edmondo.
One of the biggest problems I can see with Edmodo is a “cool” factor. After polling my students I had a mixture of my students that said they would use it, and others that said they wouldn’t. The students that said they would use it would only be for missing assignments and probably wouldn’t use it on a regular basis. One student said:” Why would I use this when I have a Facebook.”
I have a strong belief since my students are high school students; they would not be very adapt to using this product. As I said before the “cool” factor is not there for my students. The concept of this site is great, because our societies move to social networking. It does give teacher and students a more secure way of networking without the problems of inappropriate relationships between students and teachers. I think a little tweaking and some better marketing this could be a real nice site for the future of educational social networking.
cultivateedu.com 