Eddie Eddie Eddie....Oi Oi Oi

 

Well hello again, today I want you to consider what is inevitable, death, taxes, Thanos (pictured) and of course 'change'. Everything changes over time whether we like it or not.

One recent change and coming at us (Humanity) was, much like the villainous Thanos (when he tried to wipe out half the population) the dreaded 'Covid 19'  Sadly, we don't have The Avengers to fight this battle. So we need to adapt and change. Given how the pandemic has blighted the world of Teaching, it's no surprise to see the rise in use of various online technologies.  Today I am going to look at one of these technologies, namely 'Edmondo'  https://new.edmodo.com/ 

Now instead of me going through all the initial screens (signing up etc) here is a short video from Russell Stannard for complete beginners to Edmondo

(note- Russell has a full playlist on Edmondo if you find this interesting)

So the first thing to note is you can sign up as a teacher and as a student, I signed myself up as a teacher and this is my homepage view:

Looks familiar right? It seems like the set up of the home page has been heavily lifted from the Facebook design. Not a bad thing of course, as this is very user friendly even if a bit cheeky. 

Let's officially score this;

 Organisation and Layout

The layout as I just mentioned is very user friendly, with a newsfeed, calendar, notifications, create and messages all perfectly laid out and easily accessible. Absolutely no problems here. 

5 Nik-knacks

Content and Features

The content is well, it's what you make of it isn't it. This is more of a learning environment- so the content will be what you create, but the features offered to allow you to create are plentiful.  You can create a group,  create assignments, post general topics for students to reply to. You can set the replies to be either seen or moderated by yourself (a very handy feature if you don't want the students to see others work) There is also the option to share/use resources with other teachers in the Edmondo Teaching community. Finally you can post your pre-recorded lesson as the topic and pin it the top of the feed, so it will be the first thing students see (important for the flipped classroom). 

I like these features a lot so it's another 5 Nik-knacks for Steady Eddie.

Ease of Use and Navigation

Navigating Edmondo is fine, it's reasonably obvious where everything is and everything is handily located. Ease of Use.. this is my first drawback with Edmondo- like everything you can't really judge something until you have tried it yourself. So having signed up as a teacher, I set about creating a lesson (assignment in Edmondo) and at no point in the creation process was 'preview' available. I feel for an online creation tool, this is a real negative, especially as the create box is so small- it's impossible to see how it's looking (image shown below)

3 Nik-knacks.

Target Audience

The target audience is obviously teachers, and I feel like Edmondo can play a real key role in the world of teaching moving forward, if the teaching community on Edmondo continues to grow and resources continue to be shared with each other- it could become one of the most important tools around. 

4 Nik-knacks

Summary

I really like Edmondo, it feels fresh, it feels innovative and it's a tool I will definitely be using moving forward. 

As I mentioned earlier, I tried it out myself as a teacher, I created a listening exercise (this is actually a listening exercise I created for my CELTA course, which was deemed to hard for the level of learners on CELTA given the speed at which the people in the clip talk. (but fine for trying out a new tool!) So if you would like to try out Edmondo on a student level, you can try the exercise I created by signing up as a student and entering this class code: k77ade

Overall, there is a LOT to like about Edmondo, the features are great, it's really interactive, it seems fun...(and you knew it was coming) BUT there is one big negative, considering it's an online teaching tool, there is not the ability to host a live session (think Skype/Teams/Zoom) so you need to use Edmondo alongside one of these other platforms should you wish to host a live 'interactive' class. I feel like if Edmondo could add that feature to it's already strong base, it would be likely be the best online teaching tool around. Despite that, Edmondo comes in strong with an overall 4 Nik-knacks

That's it for this week's blog and look at Edmondo, and as Moira Rose once said: "When one of us shines, all of us shine. That is the meaning of ensemble."

So take Moira's advice, join the Edmondo Teaching Community and let's all shine together.

Bye bye.