Edmodo was a blended learning and distance learning platform for schools and districts, educators, and learners, providing tools for classroom instruction, professional collaboration, communication, and community building. The platform has been discontinued since 2022.
$2,500
per month
Freckle by Renaissance
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
Freckle’s differentiation platform is designed to makes it easy for teachers to reach each student at their own individual level—without having to spend extra time preparing many different lessons every day.
The Freckle platform was designed by Freckle Education in San Francisco, and was acquired and is now supported by Renaissance Learning (acquired May 2019).
I find Edmodo to be especially suited to secondary school. It is a great way to accommodate the busy schedules of teens who are often working their first jobs or attending sports and have limited time for homework, but can benefit from looking up assignments or receiving reminders on their phones. It also prepares them for college in that it resembles many collegiate LMS systems
Renaissance Accelerated Math is an excellent tool for practicing and reinforcing previously learned math skills. It is also a wonderful tool for assessing student growth and content weaknesses. It works well in a classroom that has access to technology and time to implement every day.
Edmodo is an excellent communication tool. Its Facebook style of posts makes it a familiar environment for teachers to communicate what's happening in class with both students and parents.
Edmodo's ability to submit and grade assignments online is easy to use and very similar to some other popular LMS platforms. Assignment collection is straightforward and the digital grading tools are simple and effective.
Edmodo makes it extremely easy to get both students and parents into the the LMS system. Edmodo also has an easy to use subgrouping feature as well, allowing teachers to divide individual classrooms into smaller groups for particular assignments.
Edmodo's online testing feature is fairly easy to use. I have found this a useful feature for both informal and formal assessment of students.
Edmodo's polling feature is simple and effective. There are many uses for polling both in and out of the classroom.
Edmodo's messaging feature is a nice way to communicate between student and teacher or parent and teacher.
Edmodo's app (Android or iOS), although not as feature rich as the website, works well with many of the features already listed above.
Edmodo has a very nice Calendar feature, allowing the teacher to easily post important information and/or due dates of assignments.
Edmodo makes it easy to share folders, either with the public or with your classes.
Edmodo, like many other popular LMS platforms, integrates nicely with Google Drive.
Edmodo has a great many community forums. This really is an amazing feature of their LMS. It is so very easy to connect with other teachers and bounce ideas off of each other.
“Kids don’t care what you know until they know that you care.”
One of the very first things I learned my first five years of teaching, except that student teaching does not really prepare you, is that it is my job to help my students succeed, not to just give them a grade. In the beginning, I taught the lesson, assigned work, administered tests, and took grades. I did that because that is how we are supposed to determine efficiency. Right? No, Wrong. I learned this the hard way and, sadly and regrettably, at the expense of my students at that time. Over time, I noticed how sometimes it took re-teaching along with small group instruction and interventions for students to understand and master the concepts. Since then, I have allowed for them to fix, re-do, and re-re-do their work, as needed.
I focus on my interventions just as much as I do my initial teaching of the objective. Making sure that they truly understand and master the content before moving on to another objective helps me just as much as it helps them. It saves me from continually re-teaching. Slow and steady does win the race. This approach allows me to help the student master objectives with more efficiency.
Accelerated Math has allowed for me to individualize my instruction and interventions. I love this program. Truly! I have three types of students; above, on target, and below. This program allows for growth in each area. However, I have found the most growth in my bottom quartile. Why? I believe it is because I am able to recognize a problem or issue with a particular objective immediately. I, then, can address that issue immediately before the bad habits or wrong approach is repeated.
This program is masked as a whole-group classroom approach, however, the most important components are found under the mask. One-on-one instruction is how I describe it to educators. My students are actively engaged in their own learning. They are also actively engaged in the learning of their peers, as well. I use a lot of peer tutoring techniques. They have access to knowing who is also working on mastering the same objective(s) they are working on plus they know who has already mastered said objective. This allows them to know who to go to for effective help. They are able to steer their own learning to a point. They can ask a peer or me. They can get on Accel math and look at the objective and see completed answers for a reference. This also boosts the confidence of their own understanding. They feel confident in having control of the path they want to use for gaining knowledge. Peer-tutoring and peer-discussions give them the opportunity to say out loud what they are thinking/feeling about a concept and rationalize their approach to evaluating said concept. As the teacher, I play various roles. I can teach, facilitate a small group, or just be an observer. A lot of times, I just ask open-ended questions to jump start their own questions.
Accel Math has assisted my math classrooms with tremendous gains. My test scores have gone up significantly. My students have a greater sense of accomplishment since they have been given the "driver's seat" for their own learning. This makes my heart smile! ;)
Edmodo is a LEARNING tool. Not "one more thing" I have to use or integrate. It was my one stop shop for everything for my classes. More importantly, I was able to watch my students grow. My students who were timid, and quiet, became my discussion leaders. Students who didn't do their homework, never missed an assignment once I started doing "e-tickets" and discussion groups. Everyone felt they had a voice, which made our classroom community that much stronger.
If used for its intended purpose, Edmodo is a great service. It's free, meaning teachers can actually afford it. Plus, it offers a lot of tools that make communicating with students and parents simple and painless, in addition to allowing basic assignments and quizzes. It's totally easy to learn, making it less intimidating to teachers who don't have a lot of time and who may not be completely comfortable with technology.
It is very user-friendly. All of my teachers have gotten training (including me) and all have a positive attitude as to how it will impact their classes. May have already stated that they will use it within the next day or two of training. All are very excited about the prospect this will provide.
It is consistently available with outages planned and communicated well in advance. The outages also seem to be planned to provide the least disruption to teachers.
If there is an issue, concern, suggestion, or question, Edmodo support is helpful and willing to listen. Many Edmodians are former teachers and have a sense of how classrooms work. This is crucial when building a platform to use in education. Edmodo does an excellent job of staying connected and collaborating with teachers.
Plan a little extra time to let them play with the platform with fun assignments. This made them comfortable submitting work, finding items, communicating with me or each other
When I first decide to think about changing our teaching method from traditionary to modern, online method, Google Classroom seems to the best one, because it is from Google, and everyone knows Google is the best, I lost so much time to receive the access for Google Classroom. So I researched about other online classroom platforms and when I found Edmodo, I gave it a try. And I can say that now, it's a good experience and I love It.
I like the support I receive with Renaissance Accelerated Math. I like that I can quickly and easily print the problems I need for interventions. I like the hands-on lessons with Engage but it is too scripted for my tastes. I gave up on I-Ready years back because it was too complex. I still use Moby for filling in gaps. I use Study Island for my higher students after they work through Renaissance Accelerated Math.
If there is going to be an outage for service, Renaissance does a great job of communicating that well in advance to allow the faculty to plan accordingly.
Definitely better customer service! Once the parents figured out the tool and students were proficient with it. It was an excellent way to communicate student's strengths and weaknesses in their learning.
Increased employee efficiency. Especially since teachers can share assignments easily too. And, as I've referred to many times, the grading feature is a huge time saver!
A negative impact is we have had some cyberbulling. But, used the blocking features and handled it with face-to-face interaction with the students in question and their families.
Freckle has been an asset by allowing me one more resource to use while trying to teach my students certain skills. I have been using it as a source for my students to practice skills in an attempt to strengthen their reading abilities.
Freckle is an asset to our entire school. By teaching my students how to read more effectively while using Freckle to strengthen their reading abilities, students become more successful in every area of education.
As students become better readers they tend to be more successful on the state test at the end of the year. Freckle plays a part in our success as a school. We tend to do well in our state. We were rated in the top 10 schools within our region. This is important in the financial stability of our school as it plays a part in our funding.
