Edmodo

[dobsonl]

Good Evening

 

One of our members of staff have found edmodo (Edmodo | Secure Social Learning Network for Teachers and Students) and wants to use it as a whole school VLE.

 

While I can see both positive things for the site - I can see even more negative things about it. I was just wondering if there are any other schools around that use it and what they think of the site.

 

Thank you in advance for any information.

[Guest Guest]

We've used it as a whole school since September. It's not a fully functional VLE by any means, but we're making good use of it!

[dobsonl]

Can I ask what age the students are that use it?

 

My major concern is the fact that staff can create their own groups.

[Guest Guest]

We use it for year 4 and up. Why is it a concern that staff can create their own groups? That's the whole point of the the thing, we have groups for sports teams, subjects, specific projects, staff student and parents love it

[GrumbleDook]

Sometimes the worry about staff creating their own group is walled gardens like EdModo (it all applies to SharePoint and other systems) is that is it hard to keep a track of who interacts with the various pupils / students (sometimes a concern when looking at children who have to have additional care taken with them or when considering how to protect staff against malicious accusations) and a concern about the administration when the year ends and schools have to ditch groups, promote groups or change the membership of groups. Although this is an administrative burden and some teachers are happy to do this we are still in the realms of the 24 tasks for many schools ... and this sort of thing can lead to teacher feeling that they are being forced to take on an ICT admin task, instead of it being the case of where they have more control and ownership of their classes in whichever system you are using. There is also the case that if the creation and management of groups is an admin overhead is it really that efficient for a teacher to be doing it? The best way would be automated via the MIS but I've not looked at EdModo enough to see how easy this could be.

[Guest Guest]

Edmodo can't connect to our MIS. I agree about the "admin" side of things, but I do think the informality / flexibility of Edmodo is a real strength.

[dobsonl]

While the edmodo is flexible - the admin side of things also needs to be fairly uninvolved as we have nobody that has VLE admin as their job it falls to us (team of 3 techs) to manage along with running a network that is in desperate need of some investment.

 

Our staff will never follow an end of your procedure no matter how simple it is as they will see this as an admin task which is beyond them!

 

My hold up over the staff creating their own groups has already been said by GrumbleDook - it all comes down to esafety for the students and providing an area they can use along with staff and yet someway the interaction can be monitored by admins/slt incase of incidents occurring.

[fiza]

While the edmodo is flexible - the admin side of things also needs to be fairly uninvolved as we have nobody that has VLE admin as their job it falls to us (team of 3 techs) to manage along with running a network that is in desperate need of some investment.

 

Our staff will never follow an end of your procedure no matter how simple it is as they will see this as an admin task which is beyond them!

 

My hold up over the staff creating their own groups has already been said by GrumbleDook - it all comes down to esafety for the students and providing an area they can use along with staff and yet someway the interaction can be monitored by admins/slt incase of incidents occurring.

 

Old thread I know but has there been any progress with Edmodo? Can you now have Admins that can monitor all groups? Edmodo looks good but if you cant have overall visibility then that is a big stumbling block.

[mark_macinnes]

Old thread I know but has there been any progress with Edmodo? Can you now have Admins that can monitor all groups? Edmodo looks good but if you cant have overall visibility then that is a big stumbling block.

 

I am the main school administrator for Edmodo. As the admin, you can view everything that anybody (teacher or pupil) has posted publicly. You can also view what has been posted to a group. You can delete posts as well. You cannot (at least I cannot see how) manage a group. So you cannot activate/deactivate group, change messaging settings, add/delete members. This is still down to the group leader (most likely the teacher). You can view all teachers, admins and students. You can change passwords and remove accounts.

 

The admin functionality isn't wonderful. I get the impression they created enough functionality for the minimum features to be done. I would like them to improve the admin area, but it does what you need pretty much.

 

By the way, we have setup our school subdomain with Edmodo. That is how we got the extra management functionality. Without having a subdomain, you cannot do any of this. Getting a subdomain was free and a painless process. It is essential if more than one class in a school intends to use it.

[fiza]

@mark_macinnes - Have you used any other VLEs? How does it compare?

[Oaktech]

We use a combination of Fronter (lea provided) Moodle (our own hosted solution) and Edmodo (basically used by ICT and Humanities) Fronter is used by all students from 12 upwards, Moodle is used by all students, but especially our specialist/sports/offsite mentored students. Edmodo is used from year 9 upwards.

[mark_macinnes]

@mark_macinnes - Have you used any other VLEs? How does it compare?

 

I have used Moodle and OpenHive (Sharepoint). Personally, I wouldn't say Edmodo is a VLE. Or at least, it isn't a whole school VLE. I use Edmodo as a classroom teacher and I think it is fantastic for that. It is easy to set, receive and mark homework and then to give feedback. It is easy to send and receive private messages to kids. It is quite good for class discussions however the facebook-like wall does limit this as things very easily get lost as they move too far down the page.

 

In terms of whole school, Edmodo just doesn't fit the bill. A whole school VLE needs some sort of centralised information area. This doesn't exist in Edmodo. You could implement it, I reckon, but it would be difficult, require a lot of organisation and I imagine would easily be forgotten about.

 

I use Edmodo to do the learning stuff along side our VLE. We have OpenHive which has no real functionality for learning (i.e. set work, receive work, mark work, give feedback, gradebooks, view progress) unless you use the Learning part of it which is silverlight based and is not well designed. Edmodo does the learning stuff really well, I think.