Edmodo Summer Series! (Summer Series #3)

Welcome back! it's been a few weeks, but I have been distracted with an online NASA STEM course I am a part of which is amazing! andddd playing Pokemon GO (I know I'm crazy lol) If you missed any of the previous edmodo summer series post check them out here first:

Edmodo Summer Series 1 
Edmodo Summer Series 2

Welcome to series #3! we are going to focus on the options available at the top of the individual group where you see: Note, Assignment, Quiz, Poll, and Snapshot. I do feel like these post are going to get longer and longer, so bare with me! If you want to focus on just one of these at a time click on the anchor links to take you to that part of the blog post.



Note
I briefly discussed in the previous series what a note was, but it's simply a way for you to make an announcement on the group page.When the note tab is highlighted, you type your message in to the first text box and then hit send! there are a few other options to include like the attachment icon, link icon, attach from library icon, or send later. If you want to include another group to receive the same message, the second smaller text box gives you the option to add another one of your groups.

Assignment
This is a nice feature to become paperless in the classroom. You can create assignments where students submit their work (written or as an attachment) directly onto edmodo! to create an assignment, make sure the assignment tab is highlighted in white. Give your assignment a title (i.e. about me!). Set a due date and time, a description explaining what the students need to do and make sure you have the groups you want to see the assignment listed in the small text box. If you press the 'Load Assignment' button, you can make this new assignment similar to any previous ones you have made for any of your edmodo groups, past or present! The same four options available in the note section is also available here. You can include, files, links, files from your edmodo library, or send the assignment later. You can also lock the assignment to prevent any late submissions, although if you leave this unchecked, edmodo time stamps all the submissions for you and even tells you which assignments were submitted late. The 'add to grade book option' lets you include the assignment in your edmodo grade book where you can grade the assignments online and I will talk about this in the next post!

quiz
The quiz feature allows you to have students take an online quiz directly on edmodo and have it automatically graded and placed into your edmodo grade book. I've had teachers at my school location with a 1:1 classroom give students online quizzes in the classroom which prevents cheating. If you don't have that option, like in my classroom, I give them the quiz more as a review and give them a homework grade for it instead. With the quiz tab selected, you click the blue create quiz button to make a new quiz. If you load it from a collection you have the option of using quizzes previously assigned to other groups in the past. A new screen pops up with multiple features. You can change the name of the quiz, time limit, type of question you want to add (multiple choice, true false, short answer, fill in the blank, and matching), description for the quiz and of course preview the quiz as a student. Once you add the questions and click done, you pick a due date and time, the group its assigned to and hit send. One of the cool features edmodo has is an assignment center for yourself and the students. Anything coming up soon will be seen in the bottom right. When the student sees the quiz, the press start quiz and sees a similar screen to the quiz creation one. Only this time, they select the answers to the questions and press submit quiz. They also get immediate results if you have a quiz with multiple choice, true and false, or matching. The other questions options need you the teacher to grade them individual before giving a final score to the student.

Poll
A poll is a simple way to get a quick response from students on what they think on a topic. When the poll tab is selected, type in a question and the answer choices you want the students to see. Make sure to include the different groups and hit send. Once created, you see a poll count for who has voted and a nice bar for each option. Students see something similar when they log on to their accounts. Once they vote on the poll, they see the number of votes for each option and the percentage. You can take this a step further and have the kids discuss their answers in the comment section of the poll leading to great online class discussions. I've had students vote on science fair projects for the class as a whole using this method as well. The possibilities are endless!

Snapshot
Now to the snapshot. When this first came out it was free, not 100% sure if it is still free or if there is a partial fee to it. Snapshot is a way to see what Math or ELA benchmarks the students are excelling in and which ones they need more help in, without having to create questions for them in a quiz style setting. Edmodo has done this for you with a bank of questions that relate to various benchmarks. With the snapshot tab highlighted, you choose the group receiving the snapshot, grade level, and if you want them focused on Math or ELA. Then in the small text box that says select or search a standard, you can type in a common core standard or browse them all. I like to browse them all so I can select multiple standards to test them on. Pick the standards you want and create a name and time limit for the snapshot. Once you press send and assign it, students receive a quiz based on those standards. Here is one for ELA where they receive a piece of informational text with matching questions to answer. Once the students take the quiz, the snapshot portion of edmodo makes recommendations on which standards you might want to reteach based on the classes performance. It even gives you resources from various websites you can assign to students for added help in that benchmark. You can focus on it as a whole class or individually by student. The circle graphs for the benchmarks tells you for each color what students meet the standards, are borderline to meeting it, behind, and did not complete the snapshot. Now they do not have science standards but I sometimes use the informational text ELA standards to help students who might receive reading passages like this on their state exams.  

and there you have it, all the options for the groups in your edmodo. Stay tuned for the next edmodo summer series where we look at the progress bar, the teachers library, and badges!

thanks and see you soon!