Edmodo – It’s been fun

Well here we are. The end of Edmodo is upon us and I’m a little sad – not gonna lie. For those of you who don’t know what Edmodo is (or was at this point), it was a Learning Management System started way back in 2008. It showed up at the right time.

School Information Systems had gradebooks for teachers, maybe a webpage, but little else. Teachers were clamoring for a system where they could make classes for their students, assign work to them, allow them to turn in said work and most of all communicate in or outside of class. Edmodo. It was simple, it was straightforward and it worked well.

My history

I’ve written a lot about Edmodo and was a big fan of it. I wrote a guide for teachers and published via Scribd and Edmodo found it and put it on the homepage of their new Support site – pretty cool

I liked how easy it was to setup. It took the power out of the hands of an administrator and put it in the hands of a teacher, something that was not very common at that time.

It allowed me as a computer teacher to allow students to not only reach out to me during class but also find a way to get assistance after class too. I would set up “virtual office hours” for my students and most of all, other students would be able to help their classmates.

You have to remember the only big social network at the time was Facebook and Twitter was starting to explode and when you’re teaching middle school kids – not everyone had that and even if they did, they may not have had a smartphone to go along with it.

Edmodo became a social network (of sorts) for my classes and it was a little exciting.

What happened?

Money, well lack thereof. They published a FAQ stating that their monetization efforts did not really work and they could not support the site. Edmodo always promised to be free and they honored that promise to the end.

Maybe their free product was a little too good. They eventually offered a Pro version and had a marketplace where you could get third party services to integrate with Edmodo and I think Edmodo would take a cut.

What now?

Well it is a shame they’re gone. Their biggest competitor, Schoology, was gobbled up by PowerSchool and is now exclusively offered through them. Other competitors are paid services and while there is still Moodle that requires time to setup and while it is technically “free” you still need a place to host and someone to manage it.

Google Classroom is free, but you need a Google account. Edmodo and Schoology didn’t really care, in fact Edmodo didn’t need an email which made it so appealing for teachers of younger students.

I have fond memories of Edmodo, but its time has passed.