Edmodo, Year in Review

So it has been one year since we started using Edmodo at our school.  Edmodo is social network that is designed to look and function like Facebook.  It is a social network for teachers, students, and parents to communicate, view homework, and see grades.  You make a group for each one of your classes or subjects.  The groups are closed and the only way to get in is to input the code that the teacher gives out.   I made a group for Geometry, Formal Geometry, and Geometry Math Team.  It was very easy to set up and use.  I gave out the codes to my students on the syllabus so that they could go ahead and get registered. At first I primarily just used it to communicate homework assignments and post study guides.  Near the end of the first nine weeks I decided to have the students submit a project on it in which they had to research a famous mathematician and make a gloster poster.  I created the assignment in Edmodo, put the instructions and due date on there, and the projects started coming in.  It worked so well that in the second nine weeks the whole Geometry department decided to do a project on it.  We found an educational game called ShapeMods on Edmodo that basically assesses your ability to perform coordinate transformations.  They submitted the highest score they received on the game and could attempt the game as many times as they wanted before the time it was due.  In order to get a high score on the game they needed to essentially learn all about different coordinate transformations.  It worked really well and most students had a pretty good time "playing a game" to learn.  During the third nine weeks I had another project that to be done on the computer.  The first two had worked so well that I decided to have the students turn in these projects to Edmodo also.  In this project they had to make a PowerPoint presentation in which a group of 3-4 students used trigonometry and special right triangles to determine the height of an object that was too tall for them to measure with a tape measure.  All of my students submitted their projects and it was great to have them all in the same place without them bringing in flash drives or all emailing me.  All in all I think the integration of Edmodo at our school was great and worked excellently for me.  Next year I hope to expand what I am doing with this and hopefully check out a couple more of the educational games that I can integrate into my lessons.  I would highly recommend Edmodo to all educators trying to integrate a little more technology into their classes.