Edmodo.com is a private online social platform for teachers and students to share ideas, files, events and assignments. Built on a microblogging model, the site allows teachers the ability to handle a good deal of class activity online. Teachers can send out assignments, receive completed assignments and assign grades using the online platform. In addition, they can maintain a class calendar, store and share files, have a public (RSS) stream, and conduct polls. Teachers can also use the site to send text (SMS) alerts to students. Users have a home page where they can see a summary of recent activity for their class. The home page allows the teacher to make a new assignments, assign an event to the calendar, send out an alert, write a note to an individual or a group of students, and share links or files with students. When a link or file is shared, a message can be added that explains the contents. A number of filters can be applied to the summary view, including notes, alerts, events, assignments, links and files. Teachers can also assign grades to assignments, and students can easily view a summary of their grades on all assignments. Edmodo.com was founded in September 2008 by Jeff O'Hara and Nick Borg. The site was acquired by the Fusion Projects, a subsidiary of Revolution Learning in February 2010. Chuck Rosendahl is CEO/COO of the Fusion Project. The site has undergone continuous growth since launch, and more than 200,000 students and teachers have signed up for the service since launch. Competition to Edmodo.com comes from sites such as 21Classes, which centers the student-teacher experience around a class home page, and Edublogs, which is a private blogging platform for students, teachers, classes and school districts or universities. Both 21Classes and Edublogs offer blogs with limited features for free, while Edmodo.com is currently entirely free. The Edmodo.com site has a very Web 2.0 look and feel. The site is clean and uncluttered, and quite responsive. File transfers and page loads happen quickly. Navigation is intuitive, and there is very little learning curve involved in using the site. There is no advertising shown on the Edmodo.com site. Registration to Edmodo.com is free and is required to use the site. The registration process asks for username, password, email address and first and last name. The user must complete signup as a teacher or as a student. Access to all of the features of the Edmodo.com site is available to users with a free account, and no premium membership is offered to the site. Edmodo.com is recommended to teachers in all areas of education. The site provides a ready-made solution for an online class presence, and is easy to use for both students and teachers. Anyone who has used a microblogging platform will have no trouble using Edmodo.com. The service is currently entirely free, and rivals some of the paid competition in features.

• Teachers and students can share ideas, files, events and assignments
• Maintain a classroom blog
• Teachers can post assignments, share links and files, and send text (SMS) alerts
• Teachers can maintain a class calendar and assign grades to assignments
• A public stream (RSS feed) of class activity is available
• The service is entirely free

http://edmodo.com/