Today I want to talk a little more about Edmodo.com.  If you haven’t signed up, you need to.  This is my new “go to” place on the web to collaborate with others, find resources and conduct classes.  I recently got one third grade teacher and her class on Edmodo.  The impact this is having on her class is amazing!!  They are excited about homework now because it is on this “Facebook” type interface.  The teacher has been posting pictures of their class pets (two finches who have just become parents of many little birdies) and the kids are writing about them on the wall in Edmodo.  The teacher has also found a song that teaches measurement terminology to help students remember perimeter and area.  She found a video of Justin Beiber reading the Cat in the Hat in honor of Dr. Seuss’ birthday.  She posts review problems and encourages the students to work on them at home and post how they did, what went wrong, etc.  Finally, homework isn’t a chore for this class.  It’s something that they are looking forward to.  The students are also able to access Edmodo during the school day on the classroom and computer lab computers.  We recently had a week long mid-winter break.  Most students don’t engage in educational activities during this time.  Not this class.  These kids were all over Edmodo.  They we learning outside of the school hours and they were excited about doing it. The resources that are available out there are endless.  I love how Edmodo allows you to save digital resources to your library.  We all need a place to park our web sources and Edmodo is an excelent place to do that.  You can share your library with others or just post what you want others to see as you are ready. 

We recently had our entire faculty sign up for an account in Edmodo.  The first half of one of our faculty meetings was spent, each person at their own computer, discussing prompts that our administrator posted.  The responses were incredible.  We were able to comment without waiting for a turn.  We can go back and refer to these discussions in the future.  We all had a fair chance to collaborate.

Each day, as I turn on my computer and open my email, Edmodo is also opened in a seperate browser.  It remains open all day so I can communicate with others in my PLN both at school and in the world.  I am constantly finding new digital information to share with the teachers in my school and my students.