Technology Exploration: Edmodo

This is something I have actually used in the past, but not to its full extent.

Korea is , unfortunately, a country that sometimes bases its judgement of how educated a person is on superficial qualifications. They tend to look at titles of schools, certificates awarded, etc. And that is not to say that we don't do the same thing; however, when pairing this way of evaluating people with an educational system that is, arguably, the most competitive in the world, the result is disastrous.

I started toying with Edmodo about a year ago, when our company was releasing its new curriculum. For the sake of market appeal, we were getting rid of our old text books and white boards, and replacing them with tabs and smart TVs. And, of course, the new curriculum had to be visibly impressive. It was...

Homer's The Iliad, Gladwell's The Outliers, to name a few, were some of the big-name titles that were on the roster. Also, a few teaching methods from Harvard professors were at the root of the methodology being used to teach these texts. The problem with this is pretty basic: Reading Homer at 20 years of age was really difficult for me. Teaching Homer at 28 was indescribably difficult. Learning Homer as a 15 year old EFL student in a foreign language proved to be impossible. Across the board, the books were too difficult for the students to get anything out of them. Edmodo offered me a way to talk about the texts, and provide supplementary material to maybe bridge some of the gap in understanding. I had mixed results.

Anyway, I talked to my old boss about using Edmodo with some of his teachers, and trying some new methods. Looking forward to the opportunity to reconnect with some of my foreign students!