Edmomdo 2.0

Twitter has brought the concept of micro-blogging to the attention of much of the world. The recent Iranian election drama that played out on a world stage, certainly would not have been possible without Twitter. Facebook and Friendfeed have also jumped into the instant update arena to keep up and provide interesting options themselves. In a previous article, I outlined the idea behind micro-blogging and some of the complaints associated with it.

In today’s article, I want to take a look at a great way to develop a light-weight, easy to use, Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

While Twitter is lean and sticks to it’s singular purpose (the 140 character post), there are some challenges to using it in an academic setting. Enter Edmodo.

Edmodo is built in a lightweight fashion without all the bells and whistles of a traditional learning management system (lms) and that is really its charm. It is designed like a teacher would design a simple learning environment. Like Twitter, it contains a micro-blogging interface to allow a feed of messages to be sent and viewed. Unlike Twitter, because Edmodo was designed for use on the Web, it doesn’t use the annoying #, @, etc. While this may be appreciated by many, it brings attention to a rather large drawback of Edmodo. Currently you can receive notifications (the 140 character posts) via email, Twitter, or SMS, however, you can’t publish to your feed via SMS. This negates the huge benefit of using a cell phone. Hopefully this will be included in the near future.

As privacy is one of the major concerns in education, unlike Twitter, Edmodo is based around groups. A teacher creates groups along with an access key for their students. This is an obvious benefit for the classroom and ensures easy collaboration with the necessary privacy for those involved. This group feature is pivotal for the remaining features to function appropriately.

Assignments can be created with due dates. In addition, files can be attached to the assignments. This can be very beneficial if a specific format or template is to be used. As is expected, students can reply to complete the assignment, attach a file, or add a hyperlink in their reply. The last option is great if a blog or Wiki contains the product of their assignment. A calendar provides event notification for the group and due dates for assignments. Grades can be attached to the submitted assignments and in version 3.0 a gradebook is scheduled to be introduced.

Links to interesting or important websites and files can easily be distributed to group members. Furthermore, Edmodo provides a nice storage area for these that can be easily filtered as the list becomes longer. An additional feature of Edmodo, is the ability to create public pages. These are pages that can viewed by the general public and not just group members. In addition, public pages provide the ability for a user to subscribe to their RSS feed. The value of public pages will become more apparent as I discuss possible uses for Edmodo.

Here are several obvious and some not so obvious benefits and uses for Edmodo:

• Allows students to receive and submit assignments online (a core concept of the VLE)
• Privately allows teacher to student and student to student communication. Thereby creating a more collaborative learning environment.
• Provides an easy way to share necessary files and important or interesting links.
• Provides a clear class calendar. No more guesswork as to when assignments are due and what has been assigned.
• Groups can be used for clubs and teams, not just classes.
• Public pages are perfect for letting parents see class assignments, due dates, etc. No more questions about not having homework. Furthermore, if the parent subscribes to the RSS feed, they don’t even have to visit the Web page again, the information is delivered to their email inbox.
• Collaborative tool for teachers as well as professional development. Edmodo minimizes the isolation that teaching all day in the classroom can create.
• Major school news, events, sports, emergency announcements, etc. can be easily sent to all parents and students (Twitter may have an advantage here).

Here are some potential pitfalls or areas that should be addressed:

• Students still forget their passwords. While these can be reset, it distracts from teaching. What about integrating Facebook Connect or OpenID?
• Greater amount of work and time spent in front of the computer for the teacher. In the beginning, the time required to set up a group and create the required content can be rather large.
• No two way SMS posting! See early comments in the article.
• Quizzes or tests are not supported in version 2.0 but are scheduled to arrive in version 3.0.
• New semester or school year requires any information with a date to be either re-created or best-case scenario edited to be appropriate.
• Illegal file sharing, ethics issues involving cheating, etc.

With it’s great privacy features, collaborative tools, micro-blogging, and ability to connect, Edmodo is rapidly becoming one of my favorite tools for creating a VLE. Teachers should strongly consider adding it to their technology toolbox. As always, I appreciate your feedback. Let me know how you are using Edmodo or what tools you use to accomplish these activities.

It doesn’t take an engineer to realize that $10 per laptop will be a very ambitious project indeed. The current (and final) iteration of MIT’s OLPC stands at $176, 76 percent higher than originally estimated. The primary reason for the cost increase was hardware upgrades, with the machine now sporting a 433MHz AMD Geode processor, 256MB of RAM, 1GB of Flash storage, three USB ports, 802.11b/g, and an innovative dual-mode display.

Can India do it? The inner philanthropist hopes so, but the realist who buys technology says, “No way.” Why? Component prices are simply too high. The screen for the XO laptop, which is probably the single most innovative thing OLPC has to offer, was estimated to cost $28 per unit, in volume, by Merrill Lynch. OLPC has said that the complete motherboard/CPU package will cost roughly $75, and based on the Merrill Lynch estimates, it looks as though a third of that cost will be for the CPU alone. In other words, the CPU itself, the motherboard, the screen, the NAND flash storage, and the RAM… each of these costs more than $10 to manufacture for inclusion in the OLPC. India’s $10 price hopes appear to be nothing more than pure fantasy.

As it turns out, she and the skeptics were right. It appears that the prototype currently costs more than $20 dollars to produce and is missing input and display devices. Techtree’s article explains:

After being bombarded with various media reports about India’s very own $10 laptop, its time to get real.

The much-touted cheap computing device named “Sakshat” turned out to be a fancy “pen-drive” as The Times of India put it, with some bells and whistles. The details of the product, which are still not available, were unveiled by the Ministry of Human Resource Development at Tirupati recently.

As for the product, what you get for Rs.500 are the following: 2GB of storage memory, WiFi connectivity, Ethernet port(s) and USB connectivity. This is a far cry from the laptop it was touted to be. For starters, there is no screen on this one — so there goes the computing device mumbo-jumbo. What this means is that for it to display data stored on it, it will need a compatible output device (which could be a laptop!).

The “Sakshat” measures 10″x5″ and will be priced at $10 even though the manufacturing costs had reached almost $30. But then, thanks to a considerable cost cutting endeavor, the cost was finally bought down to $10.

On the surface it appears that the Indian government has clearly sold a bill of goods it can’t produce. However, while this may be true, there is still much about the project that should be intriguing. When one looks at the first two of the five Sakshat modules, not only have these modules been constructed, but they provide the basis for a rather powerful tool.

Sakshat press release…

Educational Resources:these help the learner to explore through the vast knowledge base available on the net in the form of e-books, e-journals, digital repository, digital library etc. Most of the sources listed are open source material.

Scholarship: this module is specifically meant for scholarship holders at national and state levels to keep track of their progress and keep them informed about other scholarship opportunities through news feeds and announcements.

This means that a tool that will provide access to e-books, e-journals, and online lessons, will have been created for somewhere near $10. I’m aware that people will immediately bring up the fact that there is no display and that inherently makes the Sakshat useless by itself. While this is true, the Sakshat, if it can be hooked up to a television becomes very useful. It wouldn’t be difficult to see this working very well in a family setting to provide an incredible educational opportunity.

During the next year or two, a cost-effective solution may be found to deal with the input and display issues. If a computer could be built for $40-50 it doesn’t seem like anyone has failed. This would bring unprecedented opportunities to hundreds of millions of people.

Scott Mcleod shares his thoughts in his blog.

Keep posted. Between OLPC’s XO, Sakshat, and netbooks, I believe we will be revisiting this topic quite often in the near future.