Richard D. Solomon's Blog on Mentoring Jewish Students and Teachers: How Edmodo, a free app that facilitates student collaboration, can be used to promote instruction in the blended learning classroom

Friday, December 19, 2014

How Edmodo, a free app that facilitates student collaboration, can be used to promote instruction in the blended learning classroom

When mentoring our pre-service and in-service teachers we need to describe and model both research-based and clinically tested best practices, and demonstrate how these best practices can be applied in the real (i.e. physical) and virtual (i.e. online) classroom for both teaching and teacher training. The combination of face to face instruction in a physical setting and online learning is called blended learning. In this section of the blog we will describe how the internet can serve as a supplemental resource for instruction and the mentoring of pre-service and in-service Jewish educators. In this post we will discuss how Edmodo, a free app that facilitates student collaboration, can be applied in the blended learning classroom.

Assumption: The teacher or mentor teacher has an interactive white board (i.e. SMART Board, Promethean, etc.), a Tablet PC (also called a Slate or Blade), a computer presenter or computer with internet access attached to an LCD projector in the classroom. It would be ideal if students or mentees had access to their own laptop computers or Ipads. Given parental and school approval, and the development of specific guidelines, smartphones can be used to enhance instruction as well.

Note: Although Edmodo can be applied in the Judaic Studies blended learning classroom, it can be also be used for training pre-service and in-service Jewish educators for professional or staff development. It is our hope that Jewish educators around the globe will form an online community of practice, a CoP, a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession, to enhance the delivery of instruction and training of Jewish educators. For example, here is a CoP you might want to join.

What is Edmodo?

Edmodo is a free IOS app that can be used to facilitate student collaboration in a Judaic Studies and secular classroom.

Note: Edmodo can be used in a face to face and virtual classroom.

Where is Edmodo app located on the internet?

This is the url for the Edmodo website:

http://www.edmodo.com/home

How Edmodo, a free app that facilitates student collaboration, can be used to promote instruction in the blended learning classroom

Click on the links below and find examples of how student collaboration is facilitated by using the free app, Edmodo, in the face to face and virtual classroom:

On the next post we will discuss how Edmodo, a free app that facilitates student collaboration, can be used to promote Judaic instruction and to mentor/train Jewish educators.