VEDAMO

What is VEDAMO

VEDAMO is a video-conferencing environment carefully designed to be at its best when used to create a remote classroom. Its teacher-friendly tools and excellent support material have many uses for educators.

Rather than fit remote teaching within the limitations of generic video-conferencing software, VEDAMO encourages you to use its tools purpose-designed to create an efficient and effective virtual classroom. 

Lifting it above those generic tools are its integration with popular school software, a built-in interactive whiteboard, lesson templates, lesson recording, and breakout rooms for individual and group learning.

What we love about VEDAMO app.

VEDAMO’s use of web browsers as its platform is a good choice for an app that delivers remote teaching. Students, possibly young kids, don’t need to install new software, keep on top of updates, or worry about which devices they own.

There are more tools and features than we can mention in this review of VEDAMO.  Each is justified in its inclusion in a virtual classroom app, but the careful design of VEDAMO means that they don’t over-complicate the experience.  

Less confident teachers will be able to start using VEDAMO a step at a time building up their use of the toolset as they go. Meanwhile, confident and creative teachers can put together remote lessons that are different from but still equal to their in-person lessons.

Remote teaching is not better than in-person education, but neither is it necessarily worse — it is different. VEDAMO takes advantage of the technology at the hands of the teacher and students to ensure that nothing is lost. Rich media and clear explanation aids are at the teacher’s fingertips. Kids can interact and create as they would if together.

What skills does it teach?

VEDAMO is a versatile teaching tool not restricted to a single subject. Teachers and tutors can use it to deliver lessons on any topic. 

What age is it appropriate for?

A session using VEDAMO is controlled and led by tutors or teachers. Kids need only know how to use their device and connect to the VEDAMO session. Parents can help with this at the start of the lesson while kids get used to it.

Is VEDAMO app easy to use?

Any powerful tool with many options will have some learning requirements, but VEDAMO is as straightforward as it could be. It has supporting resources to help teachers learn it individually or inform the staff members responsible for training others in its use. 

Carrying out a remote training session using VEDAMO would be an excellent and time-efficient way to do this so that teachers also get an idea of what it is like from a student’s perspective.

Connecting to a session for a student is very simple.

How will students benefit?

A virtual classroom is different from a physical one, but it does not have to lose anything. There are tools available to the teacher to allow kids to work in various ways reflecting the physical classroom.

Small-group and individual work are easy to allocate and monitor within the app. Kids can collaborate or take a personal inquiry further while still part of the main lesson.

Kids won’t lack stimulating lesson resources either, as multimedia resources are easy to manage, and the shared interactive whiteboard is accessible to those the teacher permits. Teachers can explain using it, and kids can manipulate visual elements to show their understanding.

How will parents benefit?

Parents hear about what happens in school-based lessons through their kid’s (sometimes skewed) interpretation, from school reports and teacher feedback, but there is an option to record the sessions in a virtual classroom. Parents can use this to see how their kids engaged and what they learned and then provide whatever support or intervention they feel necessary.

How will teachers benefit?

Sessions using VEDAMO will be distinctly different to those without, so we’re looking to see how VEDAMO works with teachers and helps them adapt to the process of using virtual classrooms.

Integration with existing approaches/tools

New tools mustn’t break existing courses or force teachers to change their preferred approach, and VEDAMO is flexible enough to work how teachers want to use it. 

Those who use Google Classroom can integrate VEDAMO with their existing courses as there is an option to link Google Classroom to each live session. Schoology, Canvas, Education, Brightspace and Moodle are also supported.

Guidance

Just as important as allowing teachers to apply their existing teaching approaches is helping them transition to hybrid learning and virtual classrooms. VEDAMO does an outstanding job of doing this with many informative and inspiring articles on its website. 

Learning Curve

VEDAMO has a clean and business-like interface that is easy to read and logical in its layout. Confident technology users or those who have used similar tools can probably work out how to use them through experimentation. Others have access to supporting videos that guide them through different tasks. 

Collaboration

Teachers have enough to do without repeating work and starting from scratch, so sharing and collaboration are ingrained in schools. VEDAMO allows this interchange of ideas and resources to continue in the virtual classroom. Those who create a content template in VEDAMO can share it with other teachers who can adapt and reuse it as they see fit.

What can VEDAMO app improve on?

The built-in interactive whiteboard has all of the basic features you need including a math editor. From the point of view of an elementary or primary school teacher, it would be helpful to have a few more built-in tools that they frequently need and which avoid the complexity of the math editor.

A simple and quick fraction creator, a multiplication grid, an increased variety of backgrounds, and so on, if built-in, would be timesavers.

Good to know

There are some baseline technological requirements for VEDAMO, which its site makes clear in a detailed and informative guide. The requirements are not arbitrary but due to necessary features that older browsers might not have. In particular, iOS Safari requires version 13 as earlier ones are missing key functionality. 

A key difference between desktop and mobile versions of VEDAMO is that mobile device users cannot share their screens. 

How much does VEDAMO app cost?

VEDAMO is a web-based app that you can access for free. Once you have created an account, you have a generous 30 days of free trial to the entire app’s toolset, although it is limited to a single participant.

Free trials are great ways of trying an app out, but they have the downside of requiring a block of time to learn the software before deciding to go with it. VEDAMO avoids this by offering a live demonstration so that you can see it in action before committing time to learn it. You can book this free demo through the app’s website.

What is included with the free version vs. paid?

VEDAMO has a simple subscription structure which increases the number of participants, allows you to personalise the classroom environment and provides 5GB of storage. You get access to everything in VEDAMO with this subscription, with the only exception being storage upgrades if 5GB is not enough. There are no optional extras to worry about.

Is VEDAMO app safe to use?

VEDAMO connects people and kids, but the sessions remain under the control of tutors and teachers. The appropriate safeguards to follow will depend on the circumstances. Parents employing a private tutor whom they do not know will need to consider different things from those whose kids are connecting with their school’s teachers.

Overall rating of the app.

VEDAMO is hard to fault as a toolset for delivering remote lessons and has been awarded five stars in this app review. It has excellent features that take advantage of the strengths of working within a virtual classroom and still lets teachers exercise their skills and judgement.   Teachers, tutors and anybody else who needs to deliver educational experiences remotely should look closely at VEDAMO.