Edmodo vs Canvas

Edmodo

In a world of Course Management Systems or Learning Management Systems, what platform is the best for your students? Now isn’t that the question to answer in this pandemic of 2020? My experience with Edmodo and Canvas is very minimal. In fact, Edmodo is a CMS my children used in High School and Canvas is the LMS that I will be using extensively this coming school year. As I have researched between the two many similar features can be highlighted. For example, Teacher communities are rich in both. These are excellent resources for ready-made lessons shared by other members in different content areas. These can be adapted as is or tweaked to meet your specific needs. This is a key affordance that supports teaching. Although you may not know the teacher that created the lesson or idea, they were willing to collaborate with you. This is a great way to keep your ideas fresh and to contribute any projects that may have worked great in your classroom too. Both provide the organization of materials for both students and teachers. Teachers can upload anchor charts, videos, or announcements in a specific location to be accessed at any point in time in the future. However, Canvas is neater in appearance while Edmodo can get clustered if not planned correctly. This is a key affordance to remember in learning. A place where students can return for materials helps those less organized to continue to be successful. Another similarity is that they both offer auto-grade within the system. With Canvas, there is an additional cost to have it connect to your district’s grading system. Additionally, within Canvas rubrics can be created for assignments. The rubrics are affordances to both teachers and learners in setting expectations. Grading that has to be done for every student becomes easier and students have a guide in completing assignments. Edmodo doesn’t offer this benefit but it does offer snapshot an easy way to assign quizzes that help drive differentiated instruction per student. Polls are also offered in Edmodo which could be easily used to manage attendance or even lunch count. Although Edmodo has a social media look that students may be attracted to(if they think Facebook is cool, most students over 3rd grade may not) it does lack in the area of ease of upload. The main landing page has everything on it and it takes quite a while to load especially with slow internet bandwidths. This is one of the ways Canvas is superior.

In terms of the TPACK model, Canvas is the technology that will allow a constructivist pedagogical approach to learning in all content areas.  The most important way that Canvas usurps Edmodo is in the area of integration of apps. The affordance of not having to send students outside of the LMS is time-saving. Whenever you can prevent additionally clicks it keeps students focused on the current task. It keeps activities interactive and on-demand. Several integrative applications like FlipGrid and Pear Deck can be embedded directly into a page via HTML allowing students to create authentic responses. YouTube videos embedded in safe mode to prevent ads keep learning learner-centered. Hyperdocs from google drive provides the ability for learner-constructed choice learning. Additionally, Canvas allows students to record audio and video directly within the LMS as a way to respond to any activity. This is a great benefit to students working on language objectives. Immersive Reader is also automatically available on all pages, affording students to increase reading comprehension with text-to-speech read to them. They are able to change the language as needed. Not having to translate directions saves teacher time in lesson planning and empowers students.

I can easily see as a math teacher how I could review a lesson in place value in 4th grade. I would create my mini-lesson explaining vocabulary such as add, subtract, decimal point, whole numbers, expanded notation, word form, and the standard algorithm. Within Canvas, I can create an audio file saying the words and asking students as part of the assignment to record themselves doing the same. In the videos, I could use Total Physical response movements to teach the terms as well as pictures. I could see screencasting the flow of the vocabulary and how it all fits into the puzzle of Place Value. I can then assign them to create the same and also include an additional recording of them explaining the academic words with their drawings. Additionally, an app such as Edpuzzle can be used to assure students are interacting with the videos and not just clicking and letting it play into thin air. Accountability in virtual learning as well as my voice and or face present every day. Scaffolding the learning as Vygotsky's theory suggests and then creating a symbolic representation for terms as Bruner advocated, especially for the 4th grade age of 7 & 8. I like this because it helps with the aligned curriculum we have throughout our districts.

Try Canvas for yourself.