I'm trying Edmodo out in my Intermediate Algebra online class this semester. It has a lot of great features. It is Facebooky without all the privacy concerns. It is also great at connecting teachers with other teachers. I hope the same happens for my students. I'm already connected with 2 or 3 different teacher groups, and I'm not even that social. Edmodo also has a badging system that looks very promising. I probably won't get around to using it this semester, but I love the idea that I can use badges to recognize different forms of contribution that students can make to the class. That being said I already have a few items on my Edmodo wishlist.
- Discussion stats. I think one of the great promises of online education is the ability to make rigorous the class participation grade. I'm still working on the formula, but key variables would be number of posts, number of replies, number of replies to the student's posts, and evenness of posting activity. Just getting Edmodo to report these would be great. Even better if one could set up their gradebook with a formula that would automatically calculate their participation grade.
- Online Status. I think online ed is what it is because is asynchronous and aspatial (just made up a new word), but it is always a happy accident when I can communicate in real time with my students. An online status monitor like FB would be nice to make these encounters easier to have. Another great thing would be to have a place to go for realtime collaboration something like whiteboarding, screensharing, or audio/video conferencing. I played with another tool Wiggio that did this part very well.
- Scheduling Posts. I would love the ability to schedule some posts like bonus questions or study tips ahead of time. This helps me be more responsive to the students over the course of the semester. As of now, there is no way to delay posts.
- A Like Button. Some people don't really count this as interacting, but often I find myself 'liking' on FB if I don't have anything really significant to say. I feel that 'Liking' is still a form of participation.
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