Digital content distribution and collection

One of the basic decisions any educator has to make is how get materials (notes, handouts, lectures) to students and how to get assessments (tests, homework, projects) from them. Here, I’m going to write about two general technology options and then talk about two specific products.

Two general options

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Website-

One of easiest and most simple ways to work with digital material is a website. The most basic sites simply consist of lesson plans and contact information. Just a little more work will produce a site with a class calendar and homework downloads.  

Make a site for free:

General site builders

IM Creator- http://imcreator.com/

U Coz- http://www.ucoz.com/

Weebly- http://www.weebly.com/

Google sites- http://www.sites.google.com

K-12 specific

Class Jump- http://www.classjump.com/

Class connection- http://www.classconnection.org/

Educator Pages- http://www.educatorpages.com/

School Rack- http://www.schoolrack.com/

LMS-
This acronym stands for “learning management system”. This is a place to store all of your course content, online assessments and interactive tools like blogs and instant messaging. It works well to track student progress and guide participants through a course. Be warned-  there’s a bit of a learning curve for instructors who have never worked with an LMS. However, once a teacher or trainer understands how to use these online tools, their students benefit tremendously.
Create an LMS for free:

Blackboard coursites- https://www.coursesites.com

MyiCourse- http://www.myicourse.com/

Openclass- http://www.joinopenclass.com/open/view/t1

Edmodo- http://www.edmodo.com/

Odijoo- http://www.odijoo.com/

Ninehub- http://ninehub.com/

Two specific products:

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Gaggle-

You won’t get anything free here. It’s popular enough and powerful enough to include it in a post that’s primarily about free resources for content distribution and collection, though.

With Gaggle, you’re going to get safe student emails, online file storage and great teaching tools. For a school district, this is going to be one of the safest ways to provide your students with email access. Emails and any attachments are filtered for inappropriate words and images. If something is caught (like “breast”), it gets sent off to a human who reads the word in context and decides to let it go through or flag it and assign consequences to the student.

One great thing about this company is that they will go into action if there is a threat to the student (think suicide, abuse or violence). They will contact authorities and get help for potential issues.

In terms of digital distribution, Gaggle is a powerhouse. They provide space to store documents of all kinds and have partnered with Zoho to allow students to work on documents together, just like Google Drive. They also provide a class calendar, assignment creation and social tools like blogs. The most interesting thing tool they have is for grading. After a student submits a document, his teacher can digitally write on it, highlight words, comment and grade that document. No need to hunt for a pen. No more worrying about papers getting lost. Its all online and works beautifully.

iTunesU-

You need Safari to create and manage courses through iTunesU and students will only be able to access courses on iOS devices (iPads, iPods, iPhone). If you use iPads for your students, you should sign up for an account. If not, this really isn’t for you.

That being said, this is a great way to distribute your digital material. Please note that it isn’t meant to assess your students’ learning. It is only a means of providing them with fantastic learning opportunities. Some of the great features include task checklists, interactive iBooks and the ability to take notes on specific sections of videos.

Aside from being able to create beautiful, interactive and effective content, this is probably the best way to conduct lessons involving an iPad. Your students will need instructions, explanations and tasks to complete for any lesson you do. They’ll also have to be able to find the app you’ll be using. With iTunesU, you can quickly and easily create a lesson which includes all of these elements. Teachers will find it easy to use and students will have clear instructions and an engaging lesson.

DIY LMS or get one pre-made?

I've been wondering about Learning Management Systems (LMS's). How exactly is learning management different from teaching? Yes, I know all of the discussion about online content storage, assessment creation and data tracking. All of that really just begs the question, though. After all, in a typical teaching situation, there is a person who serves as a repository of information (supplemented by a textbook) who gives out assignments and keeps track of how students are performing. An LMS is really just a way to do all of this digitally. 

Since an LMS is a digital "teacher", can't we as teachers just make our own LMS? And are formal LMS's performing any better than ad-hoc systems? I've read quite a bit on both sides of the argument. So far, I'm not wowed by the pre-fab products. A well designed system can provide students with the essential items. First, they'll need review materials (videos, presentations, text) to understand an idea. Next, is a way to work with the material socially or alone so that learners understand ideas rather than memorize facts or phrases. This is typically done by assigning some sort of assignment. Finally, the system also has to have some way to assess students and share that assessment data with the students in a secure and sensible way. Usually, this is in the form of a gradebook. 

I've put these ad-hoc LMS's together using Google tools and a bit of hard work and they've performed pretty well. The biggest challenge (besides creating the actual learning material) was to decide how to organize everything so students could easily find what they wanted to quickly and easily. However, since all LMS's have a very similar design, it wasn't terribly difficult to get it to work about as well as Moodle or Blackboard. The most important thing I did was to keep the system consistent with what I did in the classroom. I think if a teacher does that, any LMS is as good as the next. 

Advantages of Google for teachers

For schools, Google holds a number of advantages over other online programs. I'd like to focus on one aspect in particular. Google's products all play well together. Examples are listed below.

Docs and Blogger- Blogger is a pretty good blogging platform. I can get all of the basic functionality that I expect including the ability to change fonts, add images and link to other websites. It’s a pretty limited word processor, though. Notice that I’m able to adjust the left margin of the lower portion of this paragraph. Blogger doesn’t allow me to do that, so I go over to Google Docs to write and edit my work. Then I simply cut and paste. Since these are both Google products, the formatting is perfectly preserved.

Docs and Calendar- Google Calendar is a wonderful product which allows you to easily record and share events online. One of the great features of Calendar is that you can attach any file stored in your Docs to an event. This integration makes the entire process of lesson planning effortless. Plans are easy to produce since they are laid out visually. Students can see the events you allow them to see and be able to access attached study guides. Teachers can collaborate on planning and restrict the public from accessing any sensitive events or files. Click here to read more.

Gmail, Chat, Google plus and Docs- Google’s email platform is top of the line. Space is almost unlimited (I have over 15,000 emails and only use 29% of my allotted space) and its search ability is unmatched. It also works beautifully with Google’s other social products. For schools with Google apps, this means that you’d be able to send instant messages to colleagues and administration to ask for assistance or to verify a student’s excuse for coming in late. In addition, you have the option of storing any and all email attachments in your Docs account. You can even adjust Gmail’s search preferences so that it will look through your Docs as well as your emails.

Openclass and everything else- Openclass is a learning management system (LMS) produced by Google and Pearson. The platform is very similar to products like Blackboard and Moodle. Accounts are free and since it is all online, there are not upkeep costs. One of the big advantages here, however, is the single log-in. After logging in once, students have access to Gmail, Docs, Calendar and Youtube as well as being able to access any online course material.

I know that there are dozens of great online products for schools to choose from. Some of these products are better for certain faculty than Google. However, given all of the great ways Google’s products work together, it makes sense to look closely before going with something else.