Week 1: Edmodo

Summer has officially arrived, and one hallmark of every Bryn Mawr teacher's summer experience is, of course, summer reading! This year, we have joined forces with the summer reading team to bring you online discussion groups for each of the books using a tool many of you know and use already: Edmodo.

Edmodo is a secure place to connect and collaborate with others within a closed network. You can share links, videos, notes, and even Google Docs with fellow group members. Teachers can create new groups to use for class discussion or group work. The Upper School faculty should be quite familiar with this appication after using it for the Pirate Mapping game during this past school year. Edmodo was truly created with teachers and students in mind, and I think that you'll find many neat uses for this tool if you take the time to explore all that it offers. One example of this is that you can use Edmodo to connect with other educators far and wide to discuss particular subjects of interest to you by joining groups and communities that have already been established.

The first step to getting started in Edmodo, as with most online tools, is to create an account. To do this, go to http://edmodo.com and click the "I'm a Teacher" button to sign up. Answer all the questions there and then sign in.

The next step is to join the summer reading discussion group or groups of your choosing. When you're logged in to Edmodo, look on the left hand sign of the page for the "Groups" area and click on the link that says "Join." A box will pop up asking you for a Group Code. This is where you will enter the code for the group you'd like to join. If you'd like to be a part of more than one summer reading book discussion, you can join multiple groups--just enter one group code at a time and then click the "Join" link again to join the next group.

Here are the group codes for each discussion group:

Imagine: v7kawt

Now You See It: 3p34ha

The Cellist of Sarajevo: 19wfhz

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: c6jxwj

The Other Wes Moore: 29wt8q

Each group has a discussion leader who will guide your group through a discussion over the summer. You can post notes to your group, as well as links to related articles or videos; you can also reply to other people's posts or questions.  Check in with your group from time-to-time to see what new ideas and information people are discussing! You can also tweet your thoughts about Edmodo as a discussion tool and tweet links to any interesting articles your group finds.

***LOWER SCHOOL TEACHERS: Just for you, we have created a Lower School iPad Exploration group on Edmodo for you to collect and share ideas, articles, and apps that you like.  Please be sure to join this group in addition to the summer reading group of your choice.  The code for you to join this group is: 2ytgt8.  Thanks!***