Edmodo has updated its free classroom communication system. The system, referred to as a “social learning network” by the company that develops it, has added quizzes, badges, and revisions to its student profile page, among other new features.The Web-based application provides an environment for teachers to post discussion questions to the class and allow students to respond online; share content; and assign and upload homework, grades, and school notices. Edmodo enables teacher-to-teacher resource sharing and networking opportunities.Edmodo, the company, claims 2.5 million users, up from half a million in September 2010. That growth “has been driven by teachers telling one another” about it, according to Chief Operating Officer Crystal Hutter. Likewise, teachers are the source for many new ideas for the product, she added.For example, “badges”–small iconic circles students earn and collect on their profile pages–grew out of teacher requests. “Originally, we thought wed design our own set of badges based on the key activities teachers were seeing in the classroom,” Hutter noted. “We heard quickly that while they appreciated that, they also wanted to design their own badges. Within two weeks we updated it to let them do that and also to let them share those badges with each other.”
via Edmodo Adds Quiz Builder User Badges — THE Journal.
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About Dr. Bob- Blog Curator
Bob’s has focused his expertise in technology integration in the K-12 community and teacher education. This expertise touches many different aspects of technology and learning. Areas of particular interest include: Learning, Computational Thinking and STEM, Mobile Learning, 1:1 technology initiatives, problem and project- based learning. Bob's experiences have been enhanced through collaborations with Bonnie Bracey-Sutton who formerly worked as President Clinton’s 21 Century Educator and Raymond Rose who formerly was part of the Concord Consortium, a non profit research and development corporation and the lead institution in developing one of the first virtual high schools in the nation. Other important influences include work at Learning Sciences Research Institute as Senior Research Associate at the University of Illinois Chicago where he was involved with studies of best practices of teacher education and technology. Additional experiences include, working with John Bransford at Vanderbilt University’s Learning Technology Center as Project Coordinator for the school’s Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology Grant (PT3). The grant, national in scope, was responsible for disseminating and helping to implement research on learning and technology into grant activities and the activities of grant partners.
Bob now heads up the IRIS Connect project at the University of Mississippi and is part of the Mobile Learning Portal Project at the University of Texas - Austin. The Portal project involves Dr. Paul Resta, who holds the Ruth Knight Millikan Centennial Professorship in Instructional Technology and serves as Director of the Learning Technology Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
