Child Protection Best Practice Guide to Edmodo

Edmodo has also been certified by a US watchdog organisation and approved by

the Federal Trade Commission for safeguarding child and school online safety.
Despite this we recommend the following Edmodo best practice when setting up
an account:

1 Set up the school as a subdomain this allows all communication within

your school to be viewed by administrators, providing full disclosure for
teachers and students. To do this you need to sign up your school, update
the account settings and invite teachers to join, and finally activate network.
A guide on how to do this can be found on the Edmodo pages here:
https://support.edmodo.com/home#admin.
2 Use British Council email addresses it is essential all staff signing up to
Edmodo do so using their British Council email address. It is against the Child
Protection Staff Code of Conduct if staff use their personal email address
when communicating with young learners
3 Get parental consent and Invite parents to Edmodo- You can also
provide parents with the Parent Sign Up Guide. I would also keep parents
in-the-know of all your classroom activity by inviting them to Edmodo. By
creating their own Edmodo account, parents can see what you (the teacher)
post to the class, what their student is posting to the class and their students
grades, assignments and calendar. For more information on creating parent
accounts . How to sign up a parent guide can be found here
https://support.edmodo.com/home#entries/21680905-how-to-sign-
up-parents-teacher
4 Set unique student passwords - When helping students set up their
Edmodo account, be sure to have them choose unique passwords. Using
generic passwords (such as password, Name123 or their birthdate) opens
up the possibility for students to guess each others passwords
5 Manage the distribution of group codes - Its a good idea to distribute
the group code to your students in-class. Distributing the code via a blog,
Twitter or any other public forum opens the possibility for others who are not
meant to be in your group to join your group. (NOTE: As the teacher, you have
the ability to delete any members who join your group in error)
6 Set up notifications - Notifications alert you to new activity in your Edmodo
groups and connections. We recommend setting up text or email alerts to
help you monitor students posts in your groups. To do this, visit the settings
panel in your Edmodo account and select how youd like to receive your
notifications (text or email) and the type of notifications (i.e. for new posts,
replies, direct messages, etc.).
7 Lock the group code Once your students join your Edmodo group, be sure
to lock the group code so that no other students can join. You can lock the
group code by selecting the drop down arrow next to the group code and
selecting the lock option. (Note: your group code can easily be unlocked if
needed.)
8 Reset options Edmodo provides the option to reset a group code. To reset
the group code, select the drop down arrow next to the group code and select
reset. A new 6-digit code will immediately be generated. (Note: group
members who have already joined will not need to rejoin if you reset the
group code).
9 Set expectations - Its important to set clear parameters with students
about the content that is appropriate for your Edmodo class group. At the
 beginning of the year, you may want to implement guidelines and
expectations for your students when posting on Edmodo.
10 Read-only status - Read-only status provides a valuable bridge for
students who are in the process of building appropriate digital citizenship
skills. Read-only status can be managed by the teacher and allows a student
to view classroom messages, submit assignments and communicate directly
to their teacher, but limits their ability to post messages to the entire group.
To change a students posting status, select manage from the Members
section >select the student > change status to read-only.