I spent a lesson earlier this week being the on hand trouble shooter for a lesson Malar was teaching. It was a senior class who are not obviously BYOD and so she had booked a session in the computer lab. Malar had prepared a google document for students to work through in preparation for exams. She shared this document with her class via edmodo. Her students then opened the document, made their own copy and shared it with her. Malar was then able to view any students work while they were writing their answers. She can comment on any students work directly in their documents. Generally our senior students are quite resistant to using technology, however this class really surprised me. They got stuck in and worked well all lesson. They also were great at helping each other get the document copied and shared with their teacher.
One very intuitive student asked the question "so whats the point of edmodo then?" which is an awesome question. The fact that the student was thinking about effectiveness of the tools they are using and how they can best be used is really neat. The answer to this question for me is, yes you could just use google documents and this would in itself give you a great tool. However I like the other functions that edmodo offers, in particular the self marking quiz's. So I like to use the two tools together depending on what I want the students to achieve through the activity.
I left the students with one further challenge as they seemed quite on to it. To share that document with a friend in the class also and to get that friend to read and comment on their work also. (and vice versa). This starts to unlock the true power of the google document as a collaborative tool.