While twittering around with some other teachers (and no, I do NOT spend my entire holiday talking about teaching!), I have come across a Student/Teacher system which has been designed along the sme lines as Twitter, but made more useful for a school-based environment.
From the beginning of next term, I am going to pilot it with my Year 11s and my Form to see how we get on with it...
The way it works is, I set up a class group, and the Edmodo server issues a special unique code for that class. I then publicise that code to each member of the class. Only those pupils who receive the code can access the class group's area. This will contain a calendar of relevant dates (exams, for example!), events, assignments, plus useful files and links.
I reckon it looks pretty useful, but I will be interested to see what my "guinea-pigs" think too!
Edmodo