Edmodo Yes, No to the Toast

Categories: Other
I have been playing with edmodo tonight. This looks so good. I created a student (me) just to see how things worked. As the student, I was able to log in purely with an invitation key, without the need to use my e-mail or give any personal details. I then logged in as myself, the teacher, and sent a password for a quiz to my Higher group, a note about homework, and then a personal file return to the fake student. In other words, I could return homework with a grade here without ever having to exchange e-mail addresses with the student. As a student, I could then dump the notes, links etc into my own area on edmodo. I think I'll give this a whirl with Higher tomorrow, but there is the potential to do this with all classes, and from an organisational viewpoint, it's just so easy to use.
I tried to use screentoaster today, but to my surprise ;-), the filters had got to it first. Have requested the url, but edmodo and the links for Advanced Higher all worked fine. The plagiarism checker was scarily accurate, and found the one line in a student's essay which he had forgot to reword, complete with the source of the 'steal'. The bibliography of an essay is something I used to always think would take no time at all, then I'd spend ages doing it. I let the students do this in class today, and easybib laid out the references nicely. I would (and have already) recommend both to colleagues and students.