Seven New Ways to Use Edmodo for PD at Your School
From badges to small groups, these teachers found ways to make PD fun and easy for their colleagues.
Recently, we asked several tech adoption specialists across the world about how they used different apps and tools with Edmodo. Read on to discover some fantastic ways you can use Edmodo to help your colleagues and fellow teachers learn how they can save time and teach smarter.
For two years, I have been running an online course for novice teacher users with Edmodo. At the first contact with the platform, a person who does not often use modern technology every day, if left alone, will leave Edmodo after the first login.
That is why it is also important to maintain contact, create a good relationship, conduct live broadcasts, report interesting initiatives, conferences, and during meetings at various teacher training sessions — to show enthusiasm, to talk, to show simple solutions. I am taking all kinds of Edmodo gadgets and the friendly Edmodo logo activates mirror neurons and makes us smile. A smile overcomes barriers, fear or even shame before asking for help and support.
-Joanna Waszkowska
I used Edmodo to create a community of educators and beginners in research. I invited them to join, share resources and provide technical assistance in the crafting of a research proposal and completion of deliverables. It’s been nearly two months since the implementation and the desired outcome is to help them produce a manuscript or complete research output and present those in a research conference or congress.
-Dae Habalo
I used Edmodo to build out a course for customer support specialists in industry. I created the course to serve as a blended component to the live webinars I was delivering. The content I taught included HTML, CSS, SEO, and SEM, and I was surprised by how valuable this was to the people I was training!
I had one small group in Edmodo where I posted all the live webinars. I used Camtasia to record the webinars, uploaded them to YouTube as unlisted videos, and then linked them to the small group. The trainees that couldn’t attend the live webinars really appreciated this!
I also posted the most helpful information I covered in the webinars into small groups organized by unit and lesson. This was helpful to the trainees so that they didn’t have to take notes. I also had some HTML and CSS assignments I posted to help them learn and get individualized feedback.
-Randy Fairfeld
Edmodo groups can be used to create a group in which teachers can communicate synchronously and asynchronously. This allows teachers to share their backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, ideas, and innovation with each other. That helps them to interpret or analyze data and, in turn, drive instructional decisions to improve teaching and learning in the classroom.
-Paul Munshower
Edmodo is the ideal platform for professional development, with a variety of ways to use it for this purpose. One is to create training courses within Edmodo. I have created several PD courses within Edmodo on a variety of topics. What’s nice about this is that my trainees can learn at their own pace, whenever they have time to learn.
I also love using Edmodo for in-person trainings. I create special groups for each training, which allows participants to message me during the presentation if they have questions and create assignments that they can finish during the training. It also allows me to share all the training material in folders for the group. Having these Edmodo groups also allows participants to contact me if they have questions about what we learned about when they go back to their schools.
A final thing I love about Edmodo for training is the ability to establish rich PLCs. I’ve connected with so many wonderful educators and learned so much about tech integration. I’ve planned lessons with several teachers through Edmodo and these experiences have helped improve my teaching.
-Brad Bielawski
Edmodo is the perfect place to learn from fellow educators worldwide. I’ve connected with numerous teachers to share ideas and resources via Spotlight, and as an Edmodo Ambassador, ECT, and Luminary. I’ve learned so much from my Edmodo PLC and I truly value the power to learn and grow professionally from of our tight-knit community.
-Christi Collins
I’d like to start training teachers on little things that help them in their classrooms so I’ve decided to find useful content that shows them how to use a tool or a strategy at a time. This only takes a few minutes to learn, thus teachers will be successful and be motivated.
Awarding badges for learning how to use one tool or strategy helps them to get motivated and learn more. Formative assessment takes place in a quiz form. Later on, I hope to train teachers in flipped learning so I created a group to use with teachers to introduce them to this strategy. The course itself will be delivered in a flipped style so teachers will experience the results of the strategy while learning about it.
-Carmen Degabriele
Whether you’re looking to show teachers about flipped learning or building your own PLC, there are plenty of ways that Edmodo can help you keep the learning going.
Responses have been lightly edited for grammar, clarity, and length.
