EDMODO as an engagement tool

I have been using EDMODO for more than four years. A student that was working as a teacher assistant told me about it. "It is like Facebook" she said. I researched it immediately and started to analyze it.

The first thing that amazed was how fast and in a noble way, teachers shared everything they know. I spent 2 days checking several posts with web pages that took me too many educative tools.

Then my first group was an experiment that I did with a special group of 160 students who were going to get a certification, so I previously classified them into levels of language, according to the European Frame of Reference of Languages. They were five groups but the special characteristic about it, was that they were not my students, they were working in their own interest in getting the certification. This project had being developed by me for nine months and the test and getting the certification was a very important goal to us, but especially to me. So they were 160 students working, learning by their own under my guidance, using an unknown platform completely as a very innovative space.

I shared videos, readings and audio with the students for a month, also used it as an informative and motivational bulletin. The result was that more than 85 % of our students got the certification obtaining a B1 level and 3 students got B2 level. Later I made an analysis between the relationships in their results and if they had participated in the EDMODO groups and I concluded that the students who participated got better results in their four skill tests.

In my organization, a virtual platform with students was never used before; furthermore it was never used with teachers for our own purposes like training or communicating among us.

I introduced EDMODO to my organization and it has become since 2012, the tool and space to prepare and train teachers in several areas.

So far I have created 14 students’ groups and another for a course designed for teachers named Introduction to Speech that was very successful. I spent 2 months designing it, creating quizzes and adding videos and reading material.

This last year I worked with different students. They are less fortunate in their economical income and the use of the English language is very different. It is very hard for me and any teacher to make them produce outputs, but I have discovered with great pleasure that they love to use EDMODO; if we motivate and promote the use of technology in the classroom they get advantages from it.

I have asked them to make power point presentations describing countries, companies, trips, and ultimately their life, history, description. They use the language, perhaps they translate from google but they are writing and reading in English, producing several sentences. I am very proud in how they have accepted and embraced the use of the technology thanks to EDMODO, because it is a friendly space, which allows collaborative learning.

Alba Rosario Marrón Canseco works in COBACH Baja California in México. She has 20 years’ experience in working with teenagers and has used technology since the 90’s in her classes. She has designed courses and worked as a trainer and a coordinator in outreach and in developing learning spaces. This 2015 she has won the Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching Program and she will be attending Indiana University this fall.