"With so many to choose from, it might be handy to first select a category that interests you
(like Books or Personal Organization) and then select a tool/site to explore"...
I looked at a few. Under Books LuLu has potential in our school setting for our budding authors. The Demo is well done and easy to understand what the product has to offer. It seems as if you can use the service for free to upload your creative work. One thing that I would want to be more comfortable with before I'd recommend this as an educator in a high school setting is copyright. Are any rights transferred? I would want to be clear on this issue. Maybe the best way to understand would be to pilot a project. I truly like the concept though. We've had students who self publish...so this may be a great opportunity for them.
Under Organization, I really like Zoho. It took me a few minutes to find out what a CRM is...CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Three users can access the product for free. The web site states...
"Zoho CRM Free Edition is the starting point for Zoho's full-featured on-demand CRM services. Ideal for entrepreneurs, consultants, and small businesses who need an immediate solution for day-to-day organization management. Free Edition is a no cost investment with big returns to help you better track prospects, contacts, accounts, business opportunities and inventory control".
From this perspective, this might be a valuable tool for our business classes to use. Possibly they could find a way to incorporate this into instruction. My instinct is that students who plan to go into business will often find their work environment online. Talk about practical experience...
What attracted me to Zoho first was the online meeting option for web-conferencing, then Zoho writer, sheet, note-book, planner, chat...really a one-stop shop...VERY comprehensive. A district could choose to use this for their communication bundle. I'm sure the issue of security would be of concern. I'd be interested to hear a computer network/technician's perspective on the idea. I'll have to ask.
What I think is especially useful about this type of exercise is the exposure to potential. For me applications need to be practical. Sometimes it isn't obvious on first glance how a product might best fit. Experience has taught me that storing these ideas and keeping up-to-date (as much as you can with these types of tools) can lend itself to opportunities not quite yet imagined. Truly...the web 2.0 sky is the limit.
jane
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