Edmodo Versus Moodle

Hi all,

We currently use Moodle in our district. Mostly for discussion boards. I have just started to play with edmodo and feel it is far superior for many reasons including:

Easier to create groups
Easier way to collect and grade assignments
A more modern feel

I am the tech coach here and have worked with teachers for a few years now on moodle. Many get frustrated by the lack of intuitiveness and students think its antiquated. The couple of teachers that I have shown Edmodo to have jumped in and loved it and so have the students.

The only downfall I see to edmodo is that students can post a lot of "junk". I know, I know, classroom management...but it is still a possible issue.

If you have experience in both, please leave me your thoughts. Thanks!

Stu

Tags: edmodo, moodle

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Permalink Reply by Doug Walker on December 8, 2010 at 6:03pm

I currently use Moodle. I share some of the same concerns that you are presenting. Moodle does have a lot more options for assignments. I like the control we have with regards to different types of discussion forums, assignment collection and quizzes. Edmodo is not as feature rich in these areas. I do however really like the intuitiveness of edmodo. It is very familiar to students because it resembles facebook. I am concerned about the business plan of Edmodo. Moodle sits behind our firewall, we own it, we control it. My concern is that i spend all my time transitioning my staff to Edmodo and then they go ahead and change their business plan. Very similar to what happened to me with the company that hosts this site (ning) I am also concerned about their plans for advertising and the possibility that i can open the site any day and see changes that i may not like or be ready for.

I typically do not hesitate to move my staff to new web 2.0 tools. I am slower to change when it comes to course management software because it is a large part of our class/school infrastructure next to our student information system.

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Ma on December 8, 2010 at 7:14pm

With many of us looking to design courses for one to one laptop programs this is a really useful discussion. I agree that the Moodle interface is a little clumsy. However I appreciate Doug's reminder of "the elephant in the room" of the providers of these tools may also need to earn an income. As teachers our aim is to keep our class focussed on the learning at hand, not to have them distracted or marketed to by ads.