Edmodo – Controlled Social Media!

Keeping kids away from social media is a pointless feat. Kids today have more access at their fingertips than most of had working for major companies 20 year ago. As technology becomes smaller, faster and cheaper, it is also removing some of the important skills that were once deemed essential in education like handwriting, face-to-face communication and mediation skills.

The education arena has worked steadily to find a balance between embracing technology and it being problematic in the classroom. Many educators, both working with students and other educators, have chosen to adopt the use of Edmodo, a closed platform for the safe interaction of educators and teachers without the intrusion of non-educators, like they might have on Facebook.

Offering no student-to-student messaging to reduce bullying, linking only to specified classes/teachers to make sure students aren’t interacting with strangers and whole group and small group features, Edmodo is considered a front runner in  social media and digital citizenship.

Recently, although their primary business model is to serve education, Edmodo has begun talks of expanding to the business world. But how would an education platform be helpful for businesses?

Much like Google Apps, Edmodo offers the ability to small group of workers to collaborate, work together and focus on the same material. This would yield itself nicely to focus groups or product development or the review of materials and supports for locations that are not in close proximity. Also, part of their platform is badges, a way to reward “students” or workers for their hard work. Badges can be customized and given any name you’d like. Sales teams could earn badges for reaching quarterly goals or individuals could earn them for outstanding performance in a specific area.

Some of the other business beneficial tools, in my opinion, are the built in calendar that allows you to assign tasks and they automatically populate on the built in calendar. Workers can also be notified, via email or text message, if they have assignments or tasks that are past due.

As more and more platforms continue to compete for businesses and schools to use their space, Edmodo is definitely a worthy contender. Be on the lookout for their business version!

Interested in learning more about Edmodo? Check out this brief introduction video.