Social Networking for Education

A big goal for me this year is to help teachers find  efficient ways to collaborate with each other and share resources.  There are many technology tools that can help with this, but I have landed on Edmodo as a tool for teacher collaboration.  Someone has described Edmodo as what would happen if Facebook and Blackboard or Moodle got married.  Edmodo has a face book feel, but has many of the online classroom tools available on Moodle or Blackboard.

The description from the Edmodo site describes Edmodo like this.

Edmodo is a secure, social learning platform for teachers, students, schools and districts. We provide a safe and easy way for your class to connect and collaborate, share content and access homework, grades and school notices. Our goal is to help educators harness the power of social media to customize the classroom for each and every learner.



Although I see wonderful opportunities for using Edmodo with students, I am going to highlight teacher uses in this post.  

Here are some ways that teachers can use Edmodo for professional development and collaboration.

• Join a grade level or content area group where teachers can share news, resources and ideas. 
• Share the work.  Divide and conquer.  Create resources for a shared library.  
• Participate in Professional Development opportunities.  I will be creating classes in Edmodo.  Teachers can work through at their own pace and turn in assignments to get clock hours. 
• Build your library with PowerPoint, Word Documents and even connect with your GoogleDocs. 

My advice to teachers would be to start with an Edmodo professional sharing group and then when you are comfortable, try creating a group with your students. More on all the amazing things you can do with Edmodo with students in a later post. 

To get started, you will need to register at Edmodo.  If you are a teacher in the Mount Vernon School District, you should join using our domain.  MountVernon.Edmodo.com.  You will need a special school code to get started.  You can contact me for the code or ask your Digital Literacy Coach. After you have joined, you can explore the communities and join various groups and even create your own groups.  

For more information, make plans to join us for Digital Literacy Workshop on September 24 to learn more about this powerful tool for learning and collaboration. 

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