Solving the Teacher Resource Problem

Find out how Edmodo can organize and revolutionize your school’s access to resources.

There is a lot of bad teaching content out there. In a study conducted by Parthenon, 69% of teachers surveyed were unsatisfied with content found using internet search engines like Google. Compounding this problem, it’s often difficult to evaluate the quality of this content, with 67% of teachers indicate this task is “not easy.”

But what are teachers and administrators to do? Teachers overwhelmingly report a need to supplement formal curriculum with additional resources. When interviewed by Edmodo, educators specifically called out a need for peer-vetted, standards-aligned content items. The stakes are high — an educator needs to know a lesson plan is effective before she can bet her class’ performance on it. This is a significant challenge teachers face, and it further adds to a rapidly-growing demand for their time.

A complete resource solution for schools

Edmodo has taken a number of innovative steps toward a working solution for this unique, complex problem. As a free platform for both schools and individual teachers, Edmodo is the only service that offers a combination of personal digital storage, a global online resource marketplace, a private content library for institutions, and intelligent content recommendations driven by machine learning.

Let’s break that down:

• Personal Digital Storage: In their personal Library, teachers can upload an unlimited number of resources and files. This digital storage seamlessly integrates with Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, eliminating workflow inefficiency.
• A Global Online Resource Marketplace: Teachers can find the best lesson plan or supplemental activity for a unit of study on Edmodo Spotlight, a global community for teacher-vetted content. Education publishers and content partners can also add digital content.
• A Private Content Library for Institutions: School leaders can upload their network’s instructional objects into a private digital library for their members to easily access with Spotlight for Schools. Teachers and staff can search, rate, and review this content directly on Edmodo.
• Intelligent Content Recommendations: That “machine learning” you’re always hearing about — this is where it all starts to make sense. Coming later this school year, algorithms will suggest relevant content to teachers based on what they are teaching and what other educators like them have used. Millions of educational resources have been shared on Edmodo, and Edmodo Recommendations will help bubble the best ones up to the top.

Integration and interoperability are key to success

Edmodo supports Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) framework, making it easy to connect your school resources with your school on Edmodo.

LTI allows you to integrate your learning object repository with Edmodo, in a secure and standardized way. Using LTI, if you have an interactive quiz app or a virtual science experiment, it can be securely connected securely to Edmodo with a few clicks, making it ready for your teachers.

Using LTI integration, a school or district can host its content privately on Edmodo, which will then be accessible to the users you select (eg. parents, teachers and staff, or students). For example, teachers can search for grade-level content aligned to a particular standard and quickly drop it into any Edmodo classroom for instruction or practice. Department leaders can do the same for PD groups. But the options aren’t limited to teachers: Want to offer adult education courses for parents? You can.

Over the past few years Edmodo has been making it easier for organizations large and small to connect their users on the platform. Integration services with leading partners, such as Clever and ClassLink, are already available. With these partners, schools can enable real time account management, classroom rostering, and single sign-on. For educators, this means less setup and more time for teaching.

Putting your resources to work

The result of putting your learners and learning objects in the same place is more opportunities for effective learning. Training groups and professional learning communities benefit from the quality resources being shared. Teachers can differentiate instruction more effectively for each learner’s needs. Students can become empowered and self-initiated learners. School leaders around the world can use Edmodo to facilitate better training.

This is what PD in the 21st century looks like on Edmodo:

• Seminars and courses hosted online that model authentic use cases
• Organized training resources and files
• Sub-grouping participants into separate cohorts or breakout sessions
• Interactive elements such as Assignments, Polls, and Quizzes to enrich the learning experience.
• Real-time backchannel discussions between participants and leaders
• Sustained learning and feedback following the seminar’s conclusion
• Connected learners and a personal learning network that transcends physical boundaries
• Participation badges for training attendees.
• And now, your vast resource library integrated into the training experience

This is only the beginning of our commitment to teachers, students, and parents around the world. Edmodo is already full quality resources (on Spotlight), and it’s only going to get better from here. The number of resources available is vast and enormous but Edmodo is ready to help you and your teachers find the right resources for the right classrooms.

We’re continuing to improve the resources available to teachers on Edmodo to facilitate better learning, and we’d like to help you connect your resources to Edmodo. Contact our award winning support at adminsupport@edmodo.com to get started.