Edmodo – A hands on look
Jeff O’Hara, known to many as Zemote on Twitter, invited me to take Edmodo for a spin before he opens it up to beta testers. I’ve been talking about it with him for well over a year, so I’ve been salivating over this for quite a while.
If you haven’t seen the basic layout of it, this should help you get an idea of what it looks like.
The main timeline is very similar to what you see in Twitter, just with a few more controls. You control how many appear on the page, you can do a basic search, and you can filter the central feed down to specific categories, like assignments or events. Individual posts display the icon of the person who posted it, and are highlighted by a colored border, identifying which class, group or activity the post is targeted to. For example, in the example above, all Science Club posts are grey, making it really easy to pick them out of the primary feed. One other key difference between it and Twitter is that replies are actually threaded, allowing them to stick together to form conversations. If you’ve used Twitter for very long, you know how much of a challenge it can be following back a conversation of replies and @ messages. Threaded responses make much more sense for a school environment.
Speaking of classes, activities and groups, the inclusion of them makes it rather easy for teachers to blast info out just to the students who need it. You can always click on any of those links to filter things down to just that category. Of course, if something really important comes along, you can always click “Locker” and it will stash the post in your locker (think of it like ‘favorites’ but with more of a purpose). Even your locker can start to get messy though, so Edmodo allows you to tag your posts that are saved in there and provides a drop down box to filter out your locker by tags you’ve created.
The other major difference between this and Twitter is the diversity of what you can share. You aren’t limited to 140 characters, but the size of the bubble really encourages you to keep things brief. However, you can share text, links, and files. You can even embed things into the text area, which opens up an entirely new world of possibilities (see the screencast demo for an example of this). If you’re a teacher, you can also post alerts, assignments and events, which each have their own dedicated boxes along the right hand side.
Events allow you to enter in a date, so the widget along the right can display what events are coming up soon. Assignments also allow you to enter in a date, giving you the same functionality, but they also allow you to add files directly to that posting. Alerts will make you nostalgic for Twitter itself, since they have a limit of 140 characters. I’m guessing that if it doesn’t provide the option to send alerts via SMS, that’ll be coming in a future release.
There’s no question that educators love Twitter. And while many have tried to figure out where it fits into education, so far the general consensus is that it doesn’t really make sense in the classroom. Not the way it is right now at least. Edmodo on the other hand is designed with the school environment in mind. It’s built from the ground up to provide teachers with a communication platform that’s as simple as Twitter, but shaped to support the classroom experience. While there are still some bugs to be worked out before it goes prime time, trust me when I say you want to be on the list for a beta invite. There are so few Web 2.0 sites that are designed specifically with education in mind, I get the feeling that this one is really going to lead the way.
- ShoutEm is to Twitter as Ning is to Facebook
- Edmodo released!
- Building a better Twitter
- Why I *heart* Plurk
- How effective are filters? Ask Australia
Mark Carls
3/20/2008
Steve,
Excellent post about Edmodo. I’ve been waiting (not as long as you) and can’t wait to see what it is like. I’m not sure how ready our teachers would be out here in Western New York, but I can’t wait to see what this is like. Thanks for all the posts on Twitter.
Go Duke!
Mark Carls
3/20/2008
Steve,
Excellent post about Edmodo. I’ve been waiting (not as long as you) and can’t wait to see what it is like. I’m not sure how ready our teachers would be out here in Western New York, but I can’t wait to see what this is like. Thanks for all the tweets on Twitter.
Go Duke!
Mathew
3/20/2008
I’ve wanted some of the same features added to twitter that you mention. The value of any social network is its users so even if something better came along it would be hard to switch. However for the classroom this looks like a more useable option.
DeAnna Sheets
3/21/2008
Looks like a great new tool and I think it will blow twitter away.
I signed up for the e-mail updates and can’t wait to see when it is “live” for everyone. 
Jeff O'Hara
3/22/2008
Steve, thanks for writing a great post about edmodo. I really appreciate it. We are so close to launching, just trying to make it as rock solid as possible before the launch. We are humbled by all the enthusiasm surrounding edmodo and are trying to make the best tools we can for teachers.
-Jeff
http://edmodo.com
[...] had the opportunity to meet Zemote (Jeff O’Hara) on-line…..actually in Twitter after Steve Dembo’s blog post about the new on-line site Jeff (I’m going to have to call him Zemote from here on [...]
[...] something since Edmodo has been featured on several tech-oriented sites including SomewhatFrank, Teach 42, and Reflection [...]
[...] offers a good analysis of how the platform works (Steve Dembo at teach42 also did a great hands-on overview of the features here). José also shares the views of his students (16-18yr olds) who have embraced the technology. He [...]
My Ideas for Implementation
4/10/2009
[...] http://www.teach42.com/2008/03/20/edmodo-a-hands-on-look/ [...]
Jbarrettsrq
10/26/2009
I have been using this site with my science classes this year and it is a great homework calendar. The one thing that is not obvious is to get your assignments emailed you need to check the settings to receive them in your settings, the defaults won’t result in this. Also, for the posts to be mailed, you need to add them as assignments and not as calendar events. The good news is that my kids love it, and when the school web site goes down, they have a back-up!
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
10 Comments