Edmodo-A promising looking online class management system

OKey doke, I'll see what they say.

Content is complete, but have to check formatting and I need a break (and dinner), so here's my quick take on what you want to do with Edmodo, but have no time to check it from both sides (Teacher's side and student's side-you did register as a student yourself and joined your class didn't you so you can see what they see?)

Set up a Quiz with Short Answers so they can free-write their responses. There are two time limits on quizzes: 1 for when it is due and 2 for how long they have to take the quiz. From memory, once they start they can't stop. It just times out. So set the quiz to be due in one week, but tell them once they start it, they have to finish it. The time pressure will probably do them good. Give them like 480 minutes so they have 8 hours to do it if they keep the window open.

With the short answer quiz you can give them a grade, though I think it has to be a number. No letter or P/F allowed (unless they've changed this). Still, Edmodo will record whether they have taken the quiz, turned in the quiz (or timed out), and will track the grade you gave them.

Edmodo Support is good, and if they can't do what you want, they may put it in as a feature request.

Assignments can do the same, but the students have to turn it in as Word Doc. and you can correct it and comment and grade within that interface, but it's awkward to use from both sides because the interface requires the students to log back in and check the PDF file that the interface creates so they can see the comments, but can't save them easily. I suggest the first route I mentioned. You might get better answers from Edmodo support or the users there.

Back to checking fonts, font sizes, TOC, and making sure the images didn't get mis-aligned when I added content.

42,903 words for those who are counting and 145 pages if the printing company can do it properly without messing up my content.

Set up a Quiz with Short Answers so they can free-write their responses. There are two time limits on quizzes: 1 for when it is due and 2 for how long they have to take the quiz. From memory, once they start they can't stop. It just times out. So set the quiz to be due in one week, but tell them once they start it, they have to finish it. The time pressure will probably do them good. Give them like 480 minutes so they have 8 hours to do it if they keep the window open.

Yes, that looks like the way.

I also found out you can make small groups within the main group.

Alrighty then, this seems like something I'll try. I'll find out next week if the whole shebang is accessible from inside the school. I hope so.


For my next trick, cumulative project work. One of the big hassles in, for eg, marketing class, is getting the students to add content each week to their supposed final presentation. Instead they wait until the last week and speak mostly internet copy. But if I could have them handing in some document that grew each week according to class content.........

Re: the projects: You can set up a folders in the Library for each small group and assign them to the groups. They can upload and download materially into the Library folder.

Also, I just noticed this feature, not sure how new it is, but at the very bottom of the main page, there is a small link "Languages". Not sure if it's on the Students UI but  click the link and it gives a choice of 7 or 8 UI languages including Chinese. I've had no problems with uni students using the Edmodo UI in English, though others have worried about it. Might be an option if you perceive your students' English ability low.

So I tried. And I kind of regret shutting it down now because I'm handing out bigger pieces of paper with longer term projects on them, but I was staring down a class of sixty students sitting on their thumbs in an auditorium style lecture room. They weren't responding to "Talk Now!" cues in class, so asking them to come be inert in a lecture *and* do homework online later... they do the homework in the class now and the classes are more active for it. I think if I had smaller classes, more workshop-like, meaning discussion and oral development, then some online homework later to confirm learning would work out well.