Student, Teacher & Administrator Class Tools

Here are three classroom tools that span the needs of Students, Teachers and School Administrators. These are all free to register and use.


FOR STUDENTS: MynoteIT: "The perfect tool for every student. -- mynoteIT is an extremely powerful utility for any student at any grade level. You can store all your school information in one place, and access it anywhere in the world instantly."

This is designed for middle school though university students. The core of the site is a database in which students store class notes which they can save and edit, search and bookmark, print and download, and send to their "buddies". There is a calendar for placing reminders and due dates and a Google Map mashup for locating your buddies. This would be one way to 'compartmentalize' school work from the rest of a student's online life.


FOR TEACHERS: Schoopy - Classroom Organizer, School Homepages, Useful Resources & Fun Games: "I love schoopy ...it helps me keep up with my grades and do my homework. I went from B's to A's' - Lydia - a SCHOOPY student in Maryland"

(Pronounced "skoopy," I think.) This is more for elementary through middle school teachers. The homepage has logins for Teachers and for Parents. For teachers, the site allows you to create a class homepage, a calendar, a list of assignments, document downloads, and a message board. In addition, there is a resource section where a broader group of teachers and parents can share discuss education issues and share lesson plans, and an "educational games" section designed for the kids.


FOR ADMINISTRATORS: The SchoolTool Project: SchoolTool is a project to develop a common global school administration infrastructure that is freely available under an Open Source license.

This web-based tool is going beta for primary and secondary schools in North America for the 2006-2007 school year. Currently is it mostly just a school-wide calendar system (single school of school district). This summer (2006) they will roll out the tracking of student enrollment, contact and demographic information, attendance management, gradebooks, and reports. Data can be imported and exported from the system. It is all Open Source, so there is considerable potential for a growing number of features in coming years -- if it catches on.

Tags: students,student,teachers,teacher,school administrators,school,class,classroom,homepage,note taking,education,parents

Scanr.com - Scan, copy & fax with a camera phone or digital camera

Scanr.com - Scan, copy and fax with a camera phone or digital camera

After about 10 years since my first online class offering (it was an option in a lecture class), I have finally come to the point where I now teach all of my university classes online (using the WebCT-Vista class shell). If students are late on an assignment, I require some form of written proof of their reason for being late (such as a note from a doctor, or the program from a grandparent's funeral). The most common way that they get this to me is by fax, though I do tell them that it would be OK to take a digital photo and send that.

Well, Scanr.com offers a kind of hybrid photo-fax service that some students might find useful. With this free service, students can take a digital photograph (min. 1.3 megapixels) of a document and email it to Scanr.com. Scanr.com will then process the image to enhance its sharpness and contrast, and email it back to the sender as a .PDF format file that looks a lot like a good quality black and white fax. The student can then forward the email to the instructor.

There is also a "Whiteboard" format, which is intended for copying material on a white board in the same way, but which also provides a color option. Scanr.com also has a Windows Mobile 5.0 application, but I could not get it to work on my Verizon Audioxov XV6700.

Apparently they also "tags documents with extracted keywords", though I did not try that and I am not sure just what use it would be.

Of course there are other potential educational uses of this alternative fax service beyond submitting excuses for late assignments. For me personally, it would still easier to take a photo with a digital camera, process it myself, and just send that. I will grant that Scanr.com could work better for those who think more in terms of traditional "Faxing" or are uncomfortable with photo editing software.

(Actually, if the Windows Mobile 5 application worked, I could imagine myself using that from time to time.)

Tags: scan, scanning, fax, faxing, copy, copying, scanr.com, email, .pdf

Two Free online Database Tools

(1) Lazybase

This looks very intriguing. I am sure that there are many potential edutional uses for it, though right now I am not sure just what (I think my brain may be checking out for the night!)

I used to teach DBMS skills (many years ago!) Looking at the examples on this website, today's online databases sure are a lot more sophisticated in appearance than dBase was. However, they still appear to require a lot of forethought in design and layout.

Lazybase provides some vey creative tools, as well, including mapping, star rankings, and charts. All this could make for some interesting and challenging assignments for students. In particular, it could be used for creating group or class resources. A student could post links and descriptions of items to be added to this, and the whole class could map or rate them. Others can rank and comment (breifly) on each item. Unfortunately, there is no individual password, and any student can change the name that is attributed to each posting -- so there is no way to reliable track individual contributions.


(2) MyOwnDB

This is another online database tool. Its functions appear to be more like a traditional database, with less of the flash of Lazybase. I ould not tell from the demo if it had individually assignable passwords. Might be worth checking out.

Tags: DBMS, Online Databases, Teaching

Windows Live Academic Home Page

I use Google Scholar a lot when looking for references for research articles that I am writing or editing for my journal (Tourism Geographies). Now Microsoft has a competing , and possibly better, research tool. What makes it better is the right side windw that provides full reference material for each item that is found in a search. This is usually the key information that I am looking for, and requires some searching in Google Scholar. The reference information is a great teaching tool, as well, since it shows students the important information that they need to include in their references cited list.

Check it out at: Windows Live Academic

From the webpage:

Windows Live Academic is now in beta. We currently index content related to computer science, physics, electrical engineering, and related subject areas. Academic search enables you to search for peer reviewed journal articles contained in journal publisher portals and on the web in locations like citeseer.

Tags: Research, References, Referencing, Search, Google Scholar, Academic, Microsoft

YackPack - online voice messaging

YackPack is a free online voice recording tool. The site suggests that it could be used to teach lessons and skills -- verbally describing instructions instead of having students read them (though you probably want both formats, I think). It could be used for podcasting, but since there is no editing this would be a bit limited. It seems to be potentially useful for something like an online discussion forum, but with voice emssages instead of typed messages. It could also be used for annoucements attached to a webpage. And is apparently easy for almost anyone to use.

From the web page:


YackPack allows you to create voice messages online ('yacks') and share those messages with groups ('packs'). Our service runs inside a web browser, so no software installation is needed. Using YackPack is simple: You just 'click, talk, and send.' To get a quick look, watch our Demo Video.
You can launch YackPack from our website, or you can embed our service on your own web page. This takes less than 30 minutes.
"

Designing Learning Spaces (a Wiki-based class)

Designing Learning Spaces

This class is being run in the Spring 2006 quarter at Stanford University. The class homepage is using an open Wiki -- open to the entire world to edit. There is not much there, as of this posting, but should be interesting to see how it develops...

From the class homepage:

"In formal learning settings (schools) and informal settings (any place but school) the design of space shapes personal interactions and affords learning opportunities. This project-based, collaborative course gives students the chance to integrate learning principles into the design of specific spaces for real clients and develop a rubric to assess the impact that spaces have on learning.

About this website

Our course will use a WIKI this quarter to build a knowledge base around learning spaces, to collaborate on our projects, and to post reflections on the intersection of learning and space. Each page of this site can be edited by anyone else in the class - and even the world. The site stores every version of each page, so if you make a mistake or if you feel like a recent update adds no value, you can click history and return the page to its original condition."

Engrade - Free Online Gradebook

Engrade Online Gradebook

Some school and school districts have adopted online tools to do these things, and from what I have heard, these are of mixed useability. Engrade offers a free alternative that looks fairly easy to use.

From the website:

Engrade is a free online gradebook that allows teachers to manage their classes online as well as post grades, assignments, attendance, and upcoming homework online for students and parents to see. Engrade is free and easy to use. Join over 10,000 teachers, parents, and students using Engrade today.

Free Online Gradebook Automatically calculates grades, custom grading scales, weighted assignments
Free Online Attendance Book Easily records attendance, automatically emails parents of absentees
Free Online Homework Calendar Quickly posts upcoming homework for parents and students to see
Free Online Student Reports Real-time access to grades, attendance, and homework

- No Costs Whatsoever Engrade is supported by educational sponsors, it is completely free for all users
- Web-based, Easy to Get Started Set up takes minutes, all you need is a free online account

mynoteIT - Online Student Organizer

mynoteIT: The perfect tool for every student

I am not sure if I would have used something like this as student, but there are probably some out there who would. It reminds me of those calculator-type student organizers -- the kind that Casio and others make, though it also takes advantage of the anywhere, everything and instant messaging capabilities of the Internet.

From the Website:

"Here are some reasons why every student would benifit from mynoteIT. Tell us the scores you get on assignments throughout the semester and we will automatically calculate your grade. Instant access to your teacher's contact information. Our note taking area has an auto-save feature so you never lose any of your notes if your browser crashes. You can also lookup words you don't know, and translate words between languages, instantly inside your workspace. If you need help on a certain subject, use our community search to find what you need, even bookmark notes for later use. Need to find those notes you thought you would never need from two months ago? Use the Your Search option to search through your notes instantly. Build a friends list so you can easily get in contact with your classmates. Our calendar allows you to view all your upcoming assignments so you never forget what is due again. Create (or join) groups at your school so you can more easily share information with the people who need it."

Apple - Education - iTunes U

Apple - Education - iTunes U:

iTunes U
Click. Sync. Learn.
It all starts with learning

Apple shares common goals with education — to advance teaching, learning, and research through innovation, and engage and empower students. Students expect a campus environment that accommodates their digital lifestyle, adapts to their individual learning needs, and encourages collaboration and teamwork. Introducing a way to simplify and meet all these needs — iTunes U."

Collaborative Writing with Writeboard & JotSpot

Writeboard.com and JotSpot (www.Jot.com) are wiki tools that allows students to collaborate on a shared documents that are stored online. Both keep track everytime the document is edited and saved, which (1) ensures that nothing is ever lost, and (2) enables viewing and grading of each student's contribution.

With Writeboard, teachers can simply create a topic and then share the URL and password to the specific site with students. Students can enter and edit text. Both students and teachers can view each change that was made and who it was who made by. The only problem is that there is no control over the name that someone enters when they edit the text -- and they can even leave the name blank. I used this with a small group of six graduate students in the Spring 2006 semester. Unfortunately, paragraphs that students wrote were deleted without a clear explanation (which I had required). The first time the student who did it said he was unaware that he had done that -- which I believe. The second time it happened, the ID was blank. So I have no definitive idea who did it, though there are clues.

JotSpot is a much more robust (and complicated) online editor with tracking features. I just discovered this one. It provides a full MS Word-like editor, and gives each user a different login ID. It also allows setting user access levels (read only, edit, and more) for specific users for specific parts of a document -- which Schtuff.com also does, though Schtuff does not track changes. JotSpot is clearly the best collaborative writing tool for a class environment that I have seen so far. It does, however, take a bit of experimenting to figure out how to best set it up for your situation. The only shortcoming is cost. It is free for 5 users (which will not work with my current 6 students). For up to 10 users it costs $9.95/month.

With only two months left in the semester, I am going to switch to JotSpot. If there are any unanticipated consequences of doing that, I will be posing that information on this blog.

NEW!!! - WebCollaborator.com - I just learned of this one. Sounds a lot like JotSpot, but is completely free for unlimited online use. I have not used it...yet.

EduBlogs, LearnerBlogs, UniBlogs & ESLBlogs

Free blog space for educators and students. These are Ad free, fully featured WordPress blogs (with 25mb of space), and include free Yacapaca assessment (test making) tool from the Chalkface Project. Wordpress generally gives you more flexibility than free blogs available at Blogger.com.

• LearnerBlogs.org - This site has one clear, simple aim: to provide free, high quality blogs for school students.
• UniBlogs.org - This is essentially a place where university and college students can get their own free blog.
• EduBlog.org - Free blogs for teachers, researchers, librarians and other education professionals.
• ESLBlogs.org - Free blogs for ESL and EFL English language learners.

PostGenomic.com

From the website:

Postgenomic collates posts from life science blogs and then does useful and interesting things with that data. For example, it allows you to get an instant picture of which web sites are being heavily linked to by researchers in the medical sciences, or which papers are being cited or reviewed most often by bioinformaticians, or which buzzwords are being used the most frequently by evolutionary biologists. It's sort of like a hot papers meeting with the entire biomed blogging community.

This is an interesting, community-driven, way to find the current hottest topics and articles in the Life Sciences -- Totally different from the traditional go-slow approach to academic research publishing!!!

Stickam - Multimedia Blogging Tool

Stickam allows you to post video, photos and audio on most any blog page. It also allows live video chatting. Still in beta at the time of this writing, I think it could be a good (and free up to 500MB) teaching tool, though you would need to send your students to a blog page. Check it out!

Vyew.com - Free online meeting tool

This is a free online collaborative meeting tool. It allows you to share images and captured webpages on your desktop with others who you invite by email to your meeting. You can text message each other and write/draw directly on the images. Voice conference requires use of a telephone -- which is not free. Snapshots of session screens can be saved to disk.

TeachLearning.com Online Curriculum Hot List

This is a huge list of online resources for K-12 teaching. I am sure that there are some innovative Web 2.0 resources here, but since I am not a K-12 teacher, I will have to rely on others to let me know which of these stand out. The links are divided into the following categories:

* The Arts
* Language Arts and Literature
* Mathematics
* Science
* Social Studies
* Media Literacy
* Physical Education
* Special Education
* Girls and Technology
* General Curriculum Resources
* Online Projects
* Software Reviews

The homepage TeachLearning.com has a lot of teacher resources, but requires registration to see most of them. The site also has a lot of very annoying advertisements!!!!