Edmodo
Co-Founders: Nicholas Borg and Jeff O’Hara
Venture: Edmodo
Photo source: Xconomy
Edmodo is an educational microblogging site which affords students and teachers to collaborate in a private environment. It was co-founded in 2008 by Nic Borg (CEO) and Jeff O’Hara (Co-owner) as a means to incorporate a social media element to mainstream education, while nonetheless honouring the privacy of the school learning environments. The primary service of Edmodo is that it unites students and teachers in a Facebook-like interface, but also allows for teachers to collaborate with each other. Edmodo is a for-profit venture, though it is free for teachers and students to use. It is currently supported through major grants and donations. Revenue may ultimately be generated through publisher advertising to students and teachers.
Nic Borg and Jeff O’Hara have both worked in schools as IT personnel and were motivated by their frustration with having to block great social media tools because of privacy concerns. This served as the genesis for Edmodo, where the best elements of sites like facebook are leveraged in order to afford students the freedom to socially construct their knowledge. Over time they have assembled a large team of designers, programmers, and advertisers in addition to creating a board of directors.
As I was researching this venture, it occurred to me that there was nothing to buy in Edmodo… I looked everywhere in my account. Advertising may apparently be incorporated at some point, so I have to wonder if that will affect their subscription of 8 million or so users. Will people be turned off by a product which suddenly starts feeding advertising? In school settings, this becomes a sensitive issue.
Source:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2011/08/24/edmodo-wants-to-make-social-networking-a-learning-experience/
Posted in: General, Week 04: Entrepreneur Bootcamp
tomwhyte1 11:32 am on September 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I have personally used Edmodo for years in my class, and love the mobile app as well. I am aware that Edmodo provides more sophisticated services for a fee, but was unaware that they are a for-profit venture.
With that in mind, I also wonder how the potential inclusion of a more sophisticated fee structure, or advertising might influence those 8 million plus users…
Thoughts?
frank 12:33 pm on September 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Edmodo seems to be right on the button of taking Social Media into schools and using it as a driving vehicle to leverage technology to provide education for the 21st century classroom.
In fact, I am curious as to whether our class, or for that matter any class could be taught through the use of Edmodo as the underlying technological platform facilitating online content delivery, social interaction, and tracking.
Tom, do you think that for example, you could use Edmodo to deliver a financial literacy module for your class, using content that is already available online? Any shortcomings to using such an approach, and suggestions on how they could be overcome?
My two risk concerns for this venture are 1) Whether social media moguls such as FB or Google Plus could create spinoffs to outcompete Edmodo, if Edmodo’s success grabs their attention and they decide to enter education technology. 2) I’m dubious about marketing/advertisement as revenue sources for educational products. Mainly because learning requires focus, and advertising disrupts it.
As for the founders Jeff and Nicholas, they’re clearly doing somethings right as their venture is gaining in prestige and popularity. Whether they have the right stuff to go from entrepreneur to CEO remains to be seen.
So far, so good..
teacherben 6:43 pm on September 29, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I also wonder if Google+ has the potential to steal Edmodo’s userbase. Apparently, Google Apps has 40 million active users and is used in 61 of the top 100 schools (I just plucked that off the Internet, it came from a report in US News & World Report) but they only rolled Google+ into it less than a year ago. With tons more schools preparing to move over to GApps (like mine) it seems silly not to use it. While Edmodo does include all sorts of assessment and tracking tools, for example, you can make your own quizzes and so on, you can do a lot of the same things without much more difficulty using google forms. I believe there is a lot of potential for social networks in the classroom for sure. I set up a social network for our grade 5 classes about 5 years ago using an open source product called Elgg. Even after the novelty wore off, the kids were still on there all the time and using it for things I had never imagined–creating discussion groups to share their passions for horses and LEGO and all sorts of stuff. But today, the kids ant my school are divided between a whole punch of overlapping software, Weebly, the school blogging platform, Managebac, the school unit planner, WCBS, the school gradebook, FirstClass, the school email system and then their own stuff on Facebook and all the rest. A move to a single platform like Google Apps will reduce the hassle of multiple sign-ons in a big way and make it way easier for them to keep track of their online world. I could never sell Edmodo in a situation like this and I bet that’s the same in a lot of places.
tomwhyte1 2:05 pm on September 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Interesting inquiry. Our school actually uses many of the embedded features within Edmodo to instruct our students in Information Technology, through the use of this social platform, we instruct students how to be proper within online environments, as well as managing an entire class with no physical paper. We have been quite successful with this approach.
Kent Jamieson 6:14 pm on September 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Currently, our school is looking at many options for an online learning environment. I have recently posted about Schoology as another one of these LMS’s that seems to have grown out of necessity to have ‘one stop shopping’. Teachers are looking for it all when it comes to online class management and collaboration tools, and the ability to not only view paperless student work but to comment on it, grade it and access it anywhere.
The Facebook feel of both Edmodo and Schoology is what concerns me the most, as many parents have voiced concerns in our school over the use of Facebook and sharing student files in the cloud.
It is all a learning opportunity, and as Tom put it, we can embed information into these platforms to help alleviate the concern and proactively promote positive online behaviours.
kstackhouse 7:22 pm on September 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi there,
I personally loved using Edmodo. I had tried Twiducate before that and like most of it…but it was incredibly slow. I was cautioned though through discussion with the Department of Education in my province. They were concerned about the content being hosted outside of our own servers. They said that we could continue to use it as long as there was no identifiable information anywhere on the site. Not even the school’s or my name. They were also concerned about the intellectual content stored there. Reading through the information it seemed as though the authors would be protected. However, the concern was if the company was bought out or shut down…what would then happen with those resources. Good questions to consider.
Ken
cunnian 10:26 pm on September 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
The privacy issue is indeed a sensitive one. It is interesting that working in the public system last year I would not have been able to use Edmodo, but now being in the private system it is permitted with some stipulations (close reading and disclosure of the terms of service is a big part of the solution). I wonder how many schools are currently looking for LMSs and running into this problem… does this favour the use of Moodle and others which can be stored locally? There’s a segment of the market that Edmodo can’t tap into.