Using Edmodo

As soon as my principal sent an invitation to the teachers in our building to join Edmodo, I hopped right to it. Edmodo is a safe social networking site just for educators and students that feels a lot like Facebook and allows users to post files, links, clips, and images. One of the most powerful functions of Edmodo is that teachers can create Edmodo groups for their own classroom of students. Teachers can post assignments, links, and polls and kids can respond to the teacher and to each other. The teacher has the power to moderate all comments, content, and group membership. Parents can also be invited to join the Edmodo group. As a speech therapist, I don't have a class. But if the students I work with belong to a class that is using Edmodo, it could become a powerful tool to display student work, promote 21st century communication skills, and more fully integrate classroom curriculum into speech and language goals. Our district is in the process of implementing a limited 1:1 iPad initiative. There are a few classrooms in my buildings that already have iPads. I am hoping to convince a teacher or two to use Edmodo.

Another potential use for Edmodo is for professional development and to share ideas and materials with other teachers in a building or district. I created two groups, one for writing and one for speech-language pathologists in my county. I admit that the response to both groups thus far has been lukewarm at best. But, I'm not ready to give up just yet. I will be attending a meeting with all the speech-language therapists in the county on Friday and my supervisor granted me a few minutes to talk about Edmodo. I prepared a short Snapguide with directions and will hopefully be able to entice a few folks to join. If anyone has any insight or tips to help me tempt my colleagues to participate, I'm all ears.

Screenshot of an Edmodo homepage.