Affordances of Edmodo for the flipping and expansion of the L 2 classroom

This study aims to analyze the affordances of Edmodo (https://www.edmodo.com), the leading k-12 Social Learning Network (Edmodo, 2018), for the flipping and expansion of foreign, second or additional language (L2 henceforth) classroom. To do so, we first had a brief review of literature on blended learning and selected one of its sub-models suggested by Horn and Staker (2014) – the flipped classroom – to focus on. Then, we considered ten out of the fifteen reasons Bergmann and Sams (2012) shared on why teachers should flip their classrooms and described Edmodo’s main features. Finally, we developed Bergmann and Sams’s ten reasons into four practical reasons on why teachers should consider flipping and expanding their classrooms with Edmodo and spoke about our experiences on this platform. This study showed that the various features of this free platform make it an excellent tool for such purposes and we recommend that teachers take advantage of it and adapt it to their contexts.


INTRODUCTION
Technology is in constant renovation (Lévy, 1999) and it has strongly impacted our lives.The way we communicate and learn, for example, has changed, because we now can access an infinite number of sources if we have the available means.According to Fadini and Finardi (2015), this "interaction on the internet is potentialized by synchronous or asynchronous resources, anytime, anywhere, in many forms, and with unlimited participation."Consequently, teachers who want to expand their L2 classrooms are attracted by the features of Social Networking Sites (SNSs henceforth) (Haygood, 2012).
We do not even need to pay much attention to see students carrying their mobile devices all around and, at a slower pace, to see more and more adults starting to get used to these devices too.However, these students are much more comfortable at using technology, because they were born in this info/digital era (Lévy, 1999), which explains why this techy world seems to speak their language so fluently.Even though we are not going further with this issue in this study, it is important to say that it brings a challenge in the formation of teachers.This is because they need to learn how to operate these new devices and deal critically with all this fast information flow so that their students are guided to develop the same fundamental digital skills.
With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies, tools which "allow multiple users to participate collaboratively rather than working alone" (Al-kathiri, 2015), SNSs appeared.These are service providers that allow people to create their profiles and build an online group of network users to establish connections and share information (Wolfe, 2007), such as Facebook, for example.
It is worth highlighting that SNSs must be carefully combined with the curriculum (Turkmen, 2012) for successful implementation in a course.Concerning its negative aspects for education, Durak (2017) has found the following in his study: "addiction, violation of privacy, wasting time, information pollution, and asocial personality", which could lead to poor academic performance (Rouis, Limayem and Salehi-Sangari, 2011).
Learning Management Systems (LMSs henceforth) are educational platforms like Moodle, for example, which contain features such as library, quiz, questionnaire applications, assignments, grading, planner, to name a few.Nowadays, we also have what is called a Social Learning Network (SLN henceforth) (Al-kathiri, 2015) -i.e.Edmodo -, which displays the previously mentioned characteristics of LMSs as well as the ones of SNSs, including: adding connections, liking/following posts, participating in groups, setting up a public profile, etc.
As we can see, it is undeniable that technology is changing at a shocking pace and is directly impacting our contemporary societies in many aspects.Thus, it is of great importance that we incorporate these new dimensions of time, space and dialogues in education (Arruda, 2013) to promote meaningful educational practices in our contemporary digital context.

EdmOdO
"Edmodo is a global education network that helps connect all learners with the people and resources needed to reach their full potential" (Edmodo, 2018) (see Figure 1).It was founded by Nic Borg, Jeff O'Hara and Crystal Hutter, in 2008, and is now the leading K-121 Social Learning Network with 85 million members in 400,000 schools, in 190 countries (Edmodo, 2018).Even though it is the leading k-12 SLN, Edmodo is also used in higher education (Durak, 2017).When one first starts using Edmodo, one notices that its layout and features make it look similar to Facebook.It is blue, has a newsfeed, a public profile, and has the option to add connections (e.g., teachers from all over the world).One can chat, like, reply to, share and follow posts, groups, and topics, among other possibilities.Even though it resembles a SNS, it is "education-oriented and includes little or no distractive features" (Durak, 2017).Moreover, Edmodo displays features that are common in LMSs, such as library, quiz, assignment, and grading.It is also worth mentioning that Edmodo supports Google Apps for Education and Microsoft OneNote and Office, which means its users can access Google Drive or collaborate using Google Docs without having to leave the platform.This kind of support also facilitates immediate student feedback when they submit an assignment in a word file, for instance, because the teacher can mark it without having to download it.
Because Edmodo combines the features of SNSs with that of LMSs, this platform is considered an SLN (Al-kathiri, 2015).Thus, there are three account types: teachers, students, and parents.Teachers can set up virtual classes/groups and can invite students, parents or other teachers to join them by sharing the group/class code or sending an invitation via e-mail directly from Edmodo.Once those involved have joined, the teacher can lock the class/group.Anyone else attempting to join will have to wait for the teacher's approval.As you can see, the teacher has full control over their online class -s/he can also manage students' passwords, set members to

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Serafim, V. F., Meireles, A. R. | Affordances of Edmodo for the flipping and expansion ... read-only and delete unnecessary comments.Parents' home page will be different because their accounts are designed to observe class activity and their child's progress.Moreover, teachers can also hide posts that they do not consider necessary for parents.
The combination of essential features of SNSs with educational features of LMSs makes Edmodo a complete learning and teaching platform, which can be accessed via an internet browser or its app.All these affordances increase its potential for flipping and expanding the L2 classroom, as well as make Edmodo a more private and safer online environment.It does this by offering teachers the possibility for monitoring and assessing students and exposing them to the target language when away from the brick-andmortar classroom.

BLENDED LEARNINg
Blended learning is an education program in which students can learn in part online and in part in a brick-and-mortar environment -i.e., the actual school.These two modalities are combined to provide them with a richer learning experience (Horn and Staker, 2014).
As we can see in Figure 2, there are four types of blended learning models: Rotation, Flex, A La Carte, and Enriched Virtual.The Rotation model-a course that involves rotating between online learning and other various modalities, according to the teacher's choices -has four sub-models: Station Rotation, Lab Rotation, Flipped Classroom, and Individual Rotation.Considering that many of our schools revolve around a fixed schedule and students attend its brick-and-mortar classrooms regularly, we have chosen to analyze the affordances of Edmodo for the Flipped Classroom sub-model.The difference between this sub-model and the others is that students study the theory at home, as opposed to the brick-and-mortar school

Original Article
Serafim, V. F., Meireles, A. R. | Affordances of Edmodo for the flipping and expansion ... environment, which instead becomes a place for discussions and activity resolutions (Bacich et al., 2017).

Flipped Learning
Flipping the learning process is nothing new because there are always teachers who like to assign readings for homework to engage students in debates in the brick-and-mortar classroom or to offer students some background knowledge for a lecture, for example.However, now that we are living in the digital era (Lévy, 1999), the term "flipped learning" is associated with the use of technology for educational purposes (Bergmann and Sams, 2012;Horn and Staker, 2014;Finardi, Prebianca and Schmitt, 2016).
The "flipped classroom", also known as "inverted classroom", was introduced by J. Wesley Baker in the 11 th International Conference on School of Teaching and Learning in Florida in 2000 to bring a teaching approach that suited our current digitalized contexts and needs.
In the United States of America, teachers Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams have spread their good results and challenges through a series of books on their flipped learning journey.Even though Horn and Staker ( 2014) called these blended learning types "models" -something that sounds ideal and worthy of emulation, others have an alternative perspective.In "Flip your Classroom: reach every student in every class every day ( 2012)" and in "Flipped Learning for English Instruction ( 2015)", the authors make it clear that there is not such a thing as "the" flipped classroom, because every teacher will have a different result depending on their contexts, experiences, and adaptation processes.In fact, according to Bergmann and Sams (2012, p. 11), it is "more about a mindset; redirecting attention away from the teacher and putting attention on the learner and the learning", which is one of the main differences between the blended learning models and the traditional learning model in which students do not participate actively.
To flip their classrooms, Bergmann and Sams (2015) moved the direct instruction away from the brick-and-mortar classroom.To do so, they recorded their own instructional videos, which they called "flipped videos", so that students could watch them prior to coming to class.In the classroom, students would then engage in higher-order thinking activities to practice the concepts they learned from the videos.
As we mentioned before, the way a teacher flips his/her classroom varies depending on their contexts.However, one thing is common to every flipped classroom: the content that the teacher would spend a long time lecturing in class should now be seen before the actual class.For that, students need to have access to it in advance.Thinking of these circumstances in our digital scenario, we suggest the use of the Edmodo platform for the flipping and expansion of the L2 classroom.Moreover, we share some reasons on why teachers should try to adapt it to their contexts.

Ten reasons to flip a classroom
The selection criteria for the reasons were to have a direct impact on the interaction between teachers and students in this blended context -the flipped classroom -, which orbits around a fixed schedule.

RESEARCh qUESTION(S)
The main question to this study is: What are the affordances of Edmodo for the flipping and expansion of the L2 classroom?Minor questions include: What are the fundamental components of a flipped and expanded classroom?and, How can Edmodo be used to flip and expand the L2 classroom?

METhODS
In the first part of this qualitative study, we had a brief review of literature on blended learning and selected one of its sub-models suggested by Horn and Staker (2014) -the flipped classroom -to focus on.Then, we considered ten out of the fifteen reasons Bergmann and Sams (2012) shared in their book, "Flip your classroom: reach every student in every class every day" about why teachers should flip their classrooms.Following this, we described Edmodo's general information and main features.Next, we developed Bergmann and Sams's ten reasons into four practical reasons on why teachers should consider flipping and expanding their classrooms with Edmodo.Finally, we shared a few experiences we have had on this SLN.

MAIN RESULTS: REASONS FOR FLIPPINg AND ExPANDINg
ThE L2 CLASSROOM wITh EdmOdO

Flipping and expanding the L2 classroom with Edmodo speaks the language of today's students
Contemporary students are no strangers to internet usage, with Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, as just a few of the many digital resources available.They are "natural experts" on operating smartphones, tablets, and laptops.Incidentally, they are also exposed to plenty of content available in different languages, but teachers do not have control over their students' learning on these SNSs.
The flipping and expansion of the L2 classroom with Edmodo "can not only keep students engaged outside of class, but it can also be used as a bridge and preparation for in-class discussions and debates to follow the online postings so that the in-class time may be devoted to real-world discussions and communicative tasks."(McKim, 2016) With this, Edmodo is not merely an additional digital resource on their mobile devices but is rather a more private and safer place to learn and practice L2 at their own pace, counting on their teacher's online support and feedback.
In the brick-and-mortar school environment, they could be provided with more opportunities to develop their L2 skills through direct involvement, participation and reflection in activities proposed and mediated by the teacher.In other words, the classroom should be a community of discourse where students could engage in inquiring, hypothesizing, and debating (Fosnot, 1989).In doing so, this follows the principles of the constructivist theory of learning where learning is seen as the development itself and not its product (Fosnot, 2013).This characterizes the flipped learning model as an effective methodology (Bacich and Moran, 2018).

Flipping and expanding the L2 classroom with Edmodo allows teachers to personalize the teaching and learning process
In the traditional classroom, the teacher is the source of all knowledge and simply defaults to lecture for most of the class time.As a consequence, the unique strengths and needs of a student tend to be ignored.This shows that the traditional approach to teaching/learning supports the "Myth of Average" culture discussed by Todd Rose in his 2013 TED Talk.This refusal to recognize the heterogeneity in our classrooms impedes the success of a student.To illustrate, picture a classroom of various student levels of L2 proficiency.If the teacher delivered the same content to everyone, B2 students could feel bored if content were more appropriate for A1 students.Conversely, A1 students could struggle and feel unmotivated if content were more appropriate for B2 students.Essentially, "quick learners understand immediately and get bored waiting, while struggling students take more time to process."(Bergmann and Sams, 2012, p. 24).According to Bergmann and Sams (2012), accommodating a vast range of abilities in class is one of the many struggles we face in today's schools.
The flipped classroom can be seen as one of the solutions to this issue.Through flipping and expanding the L2 classroom with Edmodo, teachers can personalize their teaching and learning processes to reach every student in their class.They can create their L2 flipped video/content or select appropriate open source materials, whether authentic or not.Carefully choosing the appropriate materials can save time in planning in-class, hands-on activities.The right selection, therefore, can benefit students with different learning styles.Bergmann and Sams (2015) suggest that teachers build interactivity in their online practices so that students come to class with a basic level of understanding.For this, Edmodo is also an excellent tool because teachers can create posts, assignments, polls, and quizzes to check students' comprehension/needs prior to class.In this way, Edmodo guides a teacher's

Original Article
Serafim, V. F., Meireles, A. R. | Affordances of Edmodo for the flipping and expansion ... lesson plan as well as the student's learning experience.In fact, the more students participate and produce, the more teachers can track learning, allowing for feedback and additional growth.
Another great Edmodo feature is called Spotlight.It is considered a marketplace where teachers can share, collect, review and discover helpful resources.These can be downloaded, perused or purchased to boost their lesson planning and engage students in motivating experiences (Edmodo, 2018).
One of the resources many teachers share on Spotlight is the Edpuzzle platform (www.edpuzzle.com)(see Figure 3), a great learning management system available with an Edmodo account.Their motto "make any video your lesson" expresses precisely its function.One can either use public videos from Edpuzzle, YouTube, Khan Academy, National Geographic, TED Talks, Veritasium, Numberphile, Crash Course, and Vimeo or upload one's own video to create an online lesson.Once uploaded, the video can be cropped and further edited, including recorded audio tracks and notes.Additionally, the teacher can insert a formative assessment anytime during the video to check the viewer's understanding.When a lesson is done, the teacher can then link its URL into their Edmodo class for students to access prior to class.These features make Edpuzzle an excellent tool for L2 teaching and learning.It allows teachers to easily create listening comprehension questions through video activities, which consequently increases exposure to the target language in an engaging way that is also excellent for more auditory/visual learners.
Another affordance of the flipping and expansion of the L2 classroom with Edmodo is that students who are busy, struggling, or have special needs can "move through the material at their own pace" (Bergmann and Sams, 2012, p. 33) and work either one-on-one with the teacher or in small groups in the brick-and-mortar classroom (Bergmann and Sams, 2012).As a result, because it is a more inclusive environment, students may feel more motivated to learn the target language and more comfortable to reach out to the teacher when they need.

Flipping and expanding the L2 classroom at the university level
I, the first author, have taught English-related disciplines in a four-year certification program in Portuguese and English Languages and Literatures at a private university in the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil, since July 2017.Unfortunately, the number of students enrolling in teaching programs in Brazil has decreased significantly through the years, resulting in a class of only 28 students.Of the 28, 14 are in the 3 rd period and 14 are in the 5 th .Because this number is very small, the university does not offer exclusively Portuguese or English Language and Literature.Rather, a dual license program is offered.Moreover, my students have very different levels of proficiency, therefore teaching with traditional methods was less effective.
Believing in the potential of flipped learning and the Edmodo platform, I expanded our English classes with Edmodo from February to June 2018.At the beginning of the semester, these students took a written exam covering content seen in the previous year as well as content included in the upcoming semester.They were then placed in three different Edmodo groups (see Figure 4) according to their learning needs.Despite this placement, the students still had many opportunities to work together in the main virtual classroom, in the international group "Let's Chat in English!" (see section 6.3.1) and in the brick-and-mortar classroom.The online material to be studied before class was open source and the same content was usually displayed in different ways -i.e., videos, games, songs and written texts.Students could choose the means that best suited their learning styles.Additionally, there was always a short activity or task, such as an interactive post, an assignment or a quiz, to be completed to demonstrate comprehension.In this way, I was able to track their development and provide them with appropriate feedback to improve their learning before, during and after each class.Furthermore, their outcomes also helped me shape our time in the brick-and-mortar classroom and design more hands-on opportunities.Incidentally, their in-and out-class productions were shared online so that they could appreciate each other's work.

Original Article
Serafim, V. F., Meireles, A. R. | Affordances of Edmodo for the flipping and expansion ... To sum up, my talking time successfully decreased, and my students worked more actively and collaboratively throughout the semester.I must say, I felt very accomplished to see how much progress we made.Those who had previously struggled seemed more confident and motivated, while those more proficient were able to further advance.Soon, this experience will be shared in more detail in my MA dissertation for the Linguistics program of the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES) under the supervision of Professor Alexsandro Rodrigues Meireles.

Flipping and expanding the L2 classroom with Edmodo allows students and teachers to establish stronger connections among themselves and practice L2 with students and teachers from all over the world
In this blended context, teachers are more mediators than lecturers.Time is better spent answering questions and guiding students' learning.Now, the attention is shifted away from the teachers and is instead centered on the students.Thus, student-teacher and student-student interactions increase, because those involved spend more time collaborating online and offline.Moreover, teachers pay closer attention to the needs of their students, better personalizing their learning.As a result, students have more opportunities to develop their L2 skills not only in the brick-and-mortar classroom but also on Edmodo, ensuring "that knowledge is no longer contained in places defined by geography and can be shared and viewed transparently" (Al-Kathiri, 2015).
One of the most valuable possibilities with Edmodo is the global partnership among teachers.Once a teacher follows a topic of interest -World Languages, for instance -they can establish connections with other teachers and propose international groups.Students can then interact in the target language or participate in language exchange, as we will see in the following subsections.The benefits to this are innumerable as students are given the opportunity to learn from and with individuals of different nationalities.As an example, we believe that this platform has great potential to enable L2 learners to develop Intercultural Communication Competence, which is, "the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in various cultural contexts" (Jones, 2013, online).According to Byram and Wagner (2018, p. 140), "Language education needs to play a leading role in the development of our students' intercultural communicative competence".Therefore, we see here room for further research.

"Let's chat in English!" and "Vamos falar português!" groups
On March 31 st , 2018, I sent a message (see Figure 5) to three Edmodo groups about language learning and teaching to find teachers/professors to build a partnership for a few months.My ultimate goal was to have my Brazilian university students interact in English and learn about different cultures outside of our brick-and-mortar classroom.With a total of 88 members, this group was very active (see Figure 6) throughout April and May 2018.My students had the chance not only to share about themselves and the Brazilian culture using the target language, but also to learn more about Malaysia and Russia with their new classmates and teachers/professors.In our own subgroup, these teachers/professors and I collaborated to create a set of rules that was pinned to the main group and to plan every topic our students were tasked to discuss about.Knowing the benefits of Edmodo, on September 4 th , 2018, I set up the "Vamos falar português!"(in English, "Let's chat in Portuguese!") group.To begin, we only have written discussions, but looking toward the future, I propose to implement an expansion of the group with Flipgrig (see Figures 7  and 8), a video discussion platform I am currently using with my students to

Original Article
Serafim, V. F., Meireles, A. R. | Affordances of Edmodo for the flipping and expansion ... practice speaking and have fun.With Flipgrid, the students may develop their listening and oral skills to learn from each other outside of the traditional brick-and-mortar classroom.For complete access, students need only their university e-mails and a code, either a sequence of characters or QR.In the Spring semester, I would like to collaborate with teachers of Portuguese in different countries so that my students can practice the language and broaden their perspectives of the world.For this, these online platforms are very convenient, because teachers and students can be in touch with each other asynchronously.

Flipping and expanding the L2 classroom with Edmodo allows more opportunities for students to develop the four skills
According to Bergmann and Sams (2012), "class time is primarily used for hands-on activities or work in small groups" (p.29).This means that with the flipping and expansion of the L2 classroom, students can now have more

Original Article
Serafim, V. F., Meireles, A. R. | Affordances of Edmodo for the flipping and expansion ... opportunities to practice the four skills -listening, speaking, reading and writing in both the Edmodo and brick-and-mortar school environments.On Edmodo, they can engage in online discussions, read the news, answer quizzes, share videos of themselves speaking about an issue, practice listening through song activities, write information about themselves on their public profile, and share their own stories, to name a few of the possibilities.
At school, these practices can be reinforced by face-to-face interaction.Teachers can propose more collaborative opportunities such as video projects, debates, writing tasks, presentations, and general student-created content, all of which can be shared on Edmodo.This allows more interaction among learners and encourages future participation.For example, one feature includes earning online badges for accomplishments.
This active in-class participation is only possible because in the flipped and expanded classroom the attention is on the learner, not on the teacher.Content is seen prior to class to allow for higher-order thinking specifically in the brick-and-mortar classroom.Thus, both online and offline environments play an important role in the L2 development of the students.
As a result of all these potential affordances, students are provided with more opportunities to develop language and collaborative skills, enhance creativity, and think critically.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
As this article showed, the Edmodo platform is an excellent Social Networking Site for the flipping and expansion of the L2 classroom.We did not focus on specific challenges, because they will undoubtedly be case specific.Further, more complex studies may address this.It is important to consider that every flipped and expanded classroom will be unique.Everything will be adapted according to its educational context and the teacher's experiences and beliefs.Bergmann and Sams (2012) noted that flipped learning is about a mindset, so the first thing they suggest is flipping the thinking (2015).Secondly, one should evaluate the technological barriers, finding the time, training yourself, students, and perhaps parents to this new educational culture.Given that students can study L2 content at their own pace, this modification to the traditional style of teaching develops student autonomy.Students are more confident and better able to participate in collaborative groups.In turn, teachers are presented with a new and innovative platform to offer feedback and show support for their students.Overall, this shift is about establishing stronger connections through more meaningful interactions in the target language.Edmodo has proven to be a rich SLN and is more than able to meet this objective.For these reasons presented, we encourage teachers to take full advantage of this free platform to build their own flipped and expanded classrooms according to the context and needs of their students.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Syntax and Semantics III groups on Edmodo

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Pattern message sent to three different Edmodo groups