Teaching Ethically with the Free Web

By Liz Homan. Liz Homan is a doctoral candidate in the Joint Program in English and Education at The University of Michigan. Her research focuses on secondary teachers’ digital practices and social networks. You can find her on Twitter at @lizhoman or on her blog, Gone Digital.
Other gradhackers have talked here about the possibilities of Pinterest in the classroom and shared various other online tools to improve our productivity as instructors. Some of my personal favorite tools for course organization and collaboration in the past have included Google Apps like Drive and Calendar; Remind101, which lets teachers send text message reminders to students without direct exchange of phone numbers; and Doodle, which allows easy scheduling of writing conferences with students. I recently discovered Popplet, which is similar to concept mapping and brainstorming spaces, but with a collaborative component. And a high school teacher recently told me about gClass Folders, which streamlines the process of course management in Google by creating student folders and providing easy ways to add and remove students from course lists. And it’s all free! Read more...