Nov 25 2008
edmodo 10 weeks on, fantastic.
I blogged about edmodo, an educational microblogging app, a few months ago and thought we’d assess it as a learning tool during 4th term. Our class have been using edmodo for about 10 weeks now and my senior Modern History students are warming to it as they discover its increasing usefulness.
The hand out/in area is especially beneficial as student work can be reviewed prior to final submission and the ability to either ask and respond to individual questions or private group questions is great. In this way we can either see what the whole class are thinking or contributing or we can send specific messages to selected recipients.
The fact it is also password protected when you invite participants means it is just your group who access the relevant information so student security is not an issue.
The students believe edmodo will be of considerable benefit to them as they prepare for the 2009 HSC, so we have classified edmodo as “keeper app with merit”, not a “chuck it outer”.
The only drawback so far is DET NSW have classified edmodo as “evil”, so access is blocked at school. The students all use it at home, or in their breaks using mlearning, so this is luckily not an issue. (except in DET blocking it at school and the message this conveys about some attitudes towards useful 21st century learning applications)
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Tony,
We are organising a petition to circulate at the ETA conference this Friday/Saturday protesting the heavy filtering of DET schools. I can add Edmondo to the list of ‘unblock’ requests, if you like.
Thanks Darcy, your offer is much appreciated.
DET filtering have been in direct phone contact some weeks ago after my request to unblock edmodo was emailed in.
Not all that worried in this specific case as my seniors all use their iphones or home PCs to access edmodo anyway so being blocked at school is no real biggy.
I just get a little disappointed with the constant blanket blocking, I know why its needed, but I still get frustarted by the overbearing nature of the filters, based on a few key words or categories.
Ever tried to do online school based research on historical weapons with a Year 8 history class? NOW thats just NOT funny.
Nobody has ever called me evil before
Tony, thank you so much for writing about your good experience with Edmodo. Just want to let you know we are working tirelessly to make Edmodo better every day.
-Jeff
Tony, I came across edmodo the other through someone’s Twitter and saw a great deal of potential to use it with my first IST class next year. Then I check the web filter and found it was blocked.
You’re lucky your kids have net access away from school. I know of at least a couple of kids at my school that don’t.
DET not only need to be more sensible in their filtering, but faster to respond to requests. The web is a ever changing place, and the filter’s block until unblocked is just too limiting.
Yet, the powers that be want us to be using technology – the most reliable technology at my school is unfortunately my overhead projector.
I made a request to the DET web filtering team to have Edmodo unblocked. After receiving a copy of the guidelines for acceptable blogs/wikis, and showing how Edmodo met that, my request was still rejected:
“Thank you for requesting that the above URL be unblocked. Following examination by the web filtering team it has been decided to initiate no action to unblock this site, for students, as they are able to set up edmodo group as teacher.”
I’ve sent this to Jeff at Edmodo with the suggestion that the teacher sign-up be placed under a separate sub-domain which could be separately blocked, I havent’ heard back from them.
Simon.
Jeff
I see enormous learning potential with edmodo and the students are warming to it.
Unfortunately as you can see from Simon’s comments our DET filters are draconian, frustrating and wrong on so many levels. I understand why they need to filter (mainly a lack of bandwidth for such a large DET)
Simon
Even to have my wikis approved and unblocked took 6 weeks and by then the resources I’d posted were redundant, for this year anyway. DET filtering will be a slow process of change which is just NOT good enough, see Mark Pesce’s recent Liquid Learning post http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=94
“Filtering, while providing a stopgap, only leaves students painfully aware of how disconnected the classroom is from the real world. Filtering makes the classroom less flexible and less responsive. Filtering is lazy.”
Thanks for joining the conversation Simon and Jeff.
[...] Tony Searle also writes about the Edmodo experience in his classroom after 10 weeks of using it with his Senior Modern History students. [...]