I have been tinkering with Edmodo for a while now mainly using it for my own professional development. If you haven’t heard of Edmodo it is “a free and secure social learning network for teachers, students and schools. Edmodo provides classrooms a safe and easy way to connect and collaborate, offering a real-time platform to exchange ideas, share content, and access homework, grades and school notices.” In the last month, my district has set up a district Edmodo domain.This will allow the schools to have a community connected to students, teachers, and parents.

There are a few things I really like about Edmodo:
1. The familiar social networking type interface. It resembles Facebook so its something students are familiar.
2. I like that parents can join in the class to observe what their child is doing in the class.
3. You have a private group but the ability to make portions of it public for parent or student access without being logged in.
4. The ability for a student to have all of their classes in one login.

If you haven’t looked in to Edmodo maybe its something you take a look at over the summer. Edmodo provides a great Help Center with materials and webinars to help you learn how to use the site. They even provide great user created materials such as the “A Guide to Explain It All” below.
Edmodo