collaboration – Page 2 – iLearn Technology

Mixbook: Yearbook/Storybook/Calendar/Card creator

June 7, 2012Kelly Tenkely3 Comments3348 views

What it is: Mixbook saved us this year in a BIG way. Being our first year as a school, we didn’t want to use a big yearbook publishing company to create our first yearbook. We wanted to be able to get as much of the year in as possible (most yearbook companies have mid-year deadlines), we were only having 60 made (small potatoes for big yearbook companies), and we wanted to be able to print one-offs if we needed to. We started creating in Shutterfly, it was a familiar program, most of our helpers had used it for personal books so the learning curve was small. And then the world came crashing down. It was the day before the deadline to get our order in so that it would make it before the school year ended. Two of us logged in at the same time and apparently properly confused the system and lost the whole thing. All 30 pages of it. After throwing a pity party, trying to get in touch with Shutterfly (unsuccessfully), and declaring that there would be no yearbook, I did what anyone would do- I took my pity party to Twitter.

I never did hear from Shutterfly. You know who did come to the rescue? Mixbook. They saw my pity party tweet, apologized for our bad fortune, offered their assistance and let us know that they would be happy to help in any way they could. I was familiar with Mixbook but hadn’t used it before. I hopped onto the Mixbook site and immediately liked what I saw:

The interface is incredibly easy to use.
It allows collaborative working and tells you when someone else is editing the book so you don’t override each other.
It has great templates.
It has great customization options.
The customer service is unmatched. Honestly, any time we had a question/comment/problem they helped within minutes. During business hours they have a dynamite online chat support system. When it wasn’t normal business hours their Twitter genius would get back to me. Emails were answered within hours.
Finished books can be viewed and shared for free online.
They were incredibly helpful in keeping the price of each book reasonable for us. They extended coupon codes, gave us bulk purchase discounts, and rushed our order so that it would get to us with plenty of time to spare.

The books are GORGEOUS. They look better than they do on screen (this hasn’t been my experience with other book companies).

Mixbook is a free online scrapbook/calendar/card creator. With Mixbook, you aren’t limited to pre made templates, everything is fully customizable. The online design software is extremely easy to use and works the way you would expect it to (no unwelcome surprises). Mixbook is integrated with many popular photo sites including Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, etc. You can also easily batch upload from your computer.

How to integrate Mixbook into the classroom: As we experienced, Mixbook is a fantastic place to make school or classroom yearbooks. Despite the short timeline, we enjoyed creating our yearbooks and are glad to have our first year commemorated so beautifully. At the bottom of each page, we created a running timeline of everything that happened in our first year as a school.

Because it is so easy to customize each page, students could use Mixbook to create “published” portfolios or writing. Take pictures of student work throughout the year, keep a folder for each student. At the end of the year, students can create a Mixbook of their work. They can include the pictures of their work and add text boxes where they reflect on their learning or explain the project. For original writing, students can create digital or hand drawn illustrations that get scanned and uploaded to the Mixbook pages. Students can type the story directly in Mixbook. The finished book can be shared for free online, parents will have the option to purchase the book if they would like to.

A photo calendar would be a great way to commemorate a school year and would make an awesome end of the year gift to your students. Each month can include projects and snapshots of what you did throughout the year.

Create specialized cards and thank you stationary for your classroom. Any time you need it, it will be ready to go and more special for your students.

Group projects are easy to create with Mixbook. The collaboration ability is wonderful! You could use Mixbook with colleagues to create custom learning guides that you can get printed.

Tips: As an educator, you get an extra discount for any order of 10 items or more. OUTSTANDING!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Mixbook in your classroom!

New issue of Project PLN and The Nerdy Cast…

March 26, 2012Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2542 views

I am totally falling down on the job. The new issue of Project PLN came out a week ago (two weeks?) and I am just now getting around to posting about it. Fail. It is a good thing @thenerdyteacher and I decided to go bimonthly on it.

This month Nick and I shared some of our favorite educational blogs. Of course our lists could have gone on and on (kind of like my Google Reader feeds), but we managed to narrow it down into a reasonable number. Nick introduced me to a few new blogs I wasn’t following and I’m happy to say I’ve increased the number of feeds I subscribe to to include them. Worth the extra reading time! I hope that some of these awesome bloggers are new to you and that they encourage you and inspire you. They certainly do that for us!

You can check out the new issue here.

We started out as an every monthly e-zine dedicated to sharing great stories from our PLN with he world around us. After a year, the time constraints of running a monthly magazine took its toll on us as we tackled new challenges and built new schools. We had hoped to move to an every other month format still wanting to bring stories to everyone out there looking for educational inspiration. After some long breaks and deep discussions, we have finally decided that quality is much more preferred over quantity. Below you will find our new schedule effective this year.

The thought of stopping Project PLN was never really an option for us because we just love sharing too much and we want to give others the chance to share with everyone as well. Although we are the editors of Project PLN, we feel this is everyone’s magazine. We are excited to move into a more structured format to all of our readers a chance to submit their ideas and see the thoughts on their PLN here.

We might just make another creepy video for old time’s sake.

Thanks again for all of the support over the past couple of years. We hope you stick around for the new changes.

-Nick and Kelly

Editors – Project PLN

Publication schedule for a year:

Call for Articles: June

Issue 1: August –

Call for Articles: August

Issue 2: November

Call for Articles: November

Issue 3: February

Call for Articles: February

Issue 4: May

In other Nerdy Teacher News, @thenerdyteacher and @tgwynn have a new project: The Nerdy Cast. How those boys have time for this, I will never know! I will say, that I will happily sit on the receiving end of their genius.

Presenting Learning with Stop Motion Animation

September 14, 2011Kelly Tenkely16 Comments7085 views

What it is: At Anastasis Academy, we have some Stop Motion Animation PROS in the form of an eight year and ten-year old boy. These brothers taught themselves how to use stop motion animation, proceeded to create several learning videos (without assistance from a teacher) and, if that wasn’t enough, went on to teach the rest of our students how to do it! Incredible. Nothing like starting the day with a little viral learning! Today these two young boys stood before our junior high students (twelve to fourteen year olds) and taught them how to make a stop motion animation video. The young boys are SO proud of their accomplishment and were incredibly articulate as they taught the older kids about stop motion, the programs that can be used for stop motion and talked about technique. The older students followed along as the boys led them step-by-step through creating their own short stop motion video with a pencil or shoe. The ten-year old then issued the jr. high a challenge: Create a stop motion video before the end of the school day to show me, I’ll give you tips on what you can improve on. Above is one of the jr. high created videos that was presented. It was incredible to stand back and watch kids teaching and leading kids this way. The age difference was no barrier today!

Today, our students used the iMotion HD app on the iPad to create their stop motion animations. This FREE app is powerful in the hands of creative kids! The brothers have been using stop motion regularly to reflect on, or display learning.

The older of the two brother’s started learning stop motion using SMA (Stop Motion Animator) this is a free program that works using a PC, webcam and a whole-lotta (technical term) imagination.

For the Linux crowd, there is the free Stop Motion.

For the Mac crowd (cheers), there is the free Jelly Cam.

How to integrate Stop Motion into the classroom: Stop Motion is a great way for students to create their own animated videos. Students can use stop motion to display learning, as a way to reflect on learning, to tell a story, to demonstrate a time-lapse of a scientific process or just as a creative outlet. Stop motion requires students to do some pre-planning. First students have to decide what story they are trying to tell, next they have to decide how they are going to demonstrate that story visually, finally they need to move an “actor” frame by frame through the scene. The results are pretty incredible (as you can see above).

Tips:Some tips from our Stop Motion PROS: Make sure not to move your actor too far each time or the end result will be choppy, make sure to move your hand out of the shot before snapping the picture, plan through your story BEFORE you start.

Check out our YouTube channel for more stop motion animation from our students. The Bones, Gnome.Eaten.By.Jaws, and Anastasis Academy videos were all created by the 8-year-old! (P.S. The kids LOVE comments on their videos!)

This, my friends, is what happens when you give kids room to learn! Onward.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Stop Motion Animation in your classroom!

Pegby: Online Collaborative Peg Board/Organizational tool

July 19, 2011February 12, 2012Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3999 views

What it is: Pegby is a neat online organizational tool that has fantastic customization features. With Pegby, students (and teachers) can share boards enabling them to collaborate with friends, family, coworkers and classmates. Pegby is organized by a series of columns, students can decide on the number and organization of columns. Columns can be easily expanded and collapsed so students can focus on exactly the columns they need at any given moment. Students (and teachers) can add cards to each column. The cards look just like a 3×5 note card and can include a title, content, tags, attachments, a due date and color coding. Note cards can be dragged from one column to the next, shared with others or added to a stack of cards. Students can filter all of their cards by tags to find exactly the cards they are looking for when they need them! Pegby lets you have multiple boards so you can organize life to your heart’s content. A Pegby board can be downloaded as a .yaml file (not familiar with that file extension, it is a unix executable file.)

How to integrate Pegby into the classroom: Pegby is one of those tools that I get totally geeked out about. I love the 3×5 note card look, the columns, the tagging, the associated calendar dates. A recipe for edu-love I tell ya! Pegby is a great tool for organizing your teacher self this year. Add ideas for the school year, tasks, lesson plans, to-do items, etc. to your board as cards. Create columns that make sense to you and organize to your heart’s content! Want one better? Share your board with colleagues so that you are all on the same page and can share lessons/resources/task responsibilities.

Older students can keep their school year organized by adding assignments, tasks, uploading work, taking/keeping notes and sharing their board with Pegby. As students work on and complete tasks, they can move items from one column to the next. Those unit tests won’t be a problem because they can tag pertinent information and easily study and review tagged information.

Pegby would also be a great tool for organizing research projects (even collaborative research projects). Students can decide how they want to organize their research and notes, tag information and attach documents. All of the research is in one place and tagged for easy reference when it comes time to compile the research. Pegby could be a useful tool for students attending college classes online.

Does your school use standards to keep track of learning? Why not create columns of Standards headings, and associate each standard with a note card? Students can upload any files or work associated with the standard. OR instead of making each column a standard heading, columns can be associated with mastery level of the standard. As a student moves through levels of mastery, they can move that standard card from one column to the next making stacks out of the standard subject. Students can keep track of their own learning, share their “Standards” board with teachers and parents.

Is your class collaborating with other classrooms? Create a collaboration board where all involved classes can organize a project together.

For younger students, create a class Pegby that can be accessed on an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer. The Pegby can be added to and organized as a whole class. Make Pegby updater one of your classroom jobs that happens first thing every morning. Each student will have the chance to be in control of the board throughout the year and all students will benefit from observing and helping organize the day. (Something we don’t model enough for kids in my humble opinion!)

Tips: Pegby does require a verified email account for access!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Pegby in your classroom!

Virtual book club: Readicide

April 22, 2011Kelly Tenkely3 Comments3118 views

What: The Michigan Reading Association is hosting an interactive virtual book club for anyone to join via Facebook. This is an opportunity to network with educators around the world and take charge of your own professional development. The first book is Readicide by Kelly Gallagher (who will be hosting the book club with the Michigan Reading Association). If you aren’t familiar with this book, you can read a post I wrote when the book was first released here. The idea behind the virtual book club is to give educators a place to connect with others, share ideas, reflect and improve your classroom.

Where: It is easy to join just click to view the Facebook invitation and select “I’m Attending.”

When: The book club will meet during the month of May. Login whenever you are available to browse posts and conversations and add your own thoughts. Each week there will be a post that outlines a general road map that chunks chapters so we are reading and reflecting at a similar pace.

How: Purchase Readicide, view Kelly’s website and follow him on Twitter, “attend” the facebook invitation, let the fun begin!

I really enjoyed reading Readicide and look forward to reading it again-this time with friends to reflect with! Who else will be joining us?

Thank you to Erin for inviting me!

Diipo and Edmodo: A Social Network for Classrooms

March 24, 2011Kelly Tenkely13 Comments3892 views

What it is: If you’re like me, you can think of hundreds of ways that social networks could be used positively in the classroom. The problem: most of us can’t access said networks in our classrooms-blocked by over zealous filtering! Not to worry, there are some great classroom alternatives including Diipo and Edmodo.

Diipo is a social network created specially for education. I learned about this particular tool from @nottil, a high school student in Virginia (thanks @nottil!). Diipo makes it easy to communicate with your students, connect with other educators, and other classes. The interface is similar in feel to a Facebook or Twitter making it easy for students and teachers to pick up and start using right away. We are talking LOW learning curve here. Diipo has dashboards and apps that keep students up-to-date, help them get questions answered, and let them collaborate on blogs and group projects. Workpages keep students organized from project to project. Direct messaging features let students start a private conversation with classmates and teachers. Online project notebooks let students work together and share the information they collect in one, centralized location. An educator community lets teachers share best practices, educational content, brainstorm for collaborative projects, and pen pal programs between classes. A class roster makes it easy for teachers and students to communicate with each other. A built in microblogging platform lets students start a conversation, ask questions, and actively participate in class discussions. Students can build blogs directly in Diipo to share thoughts, reflect on learning, and write collaboratively. Teachers and students can upload and share documents, links, and resources with classmates or the entire class. Every conversation and post is archived and searchable making it easy to catch up or find something later. Students can also tag messages, content, and workpages to make it easier to organize and find content. The Diipo platform is wonderfully all-inclusive! Diipo is intended for students 13 years and older.

Edmodo is a social networking platform for classrooms that has been around longer. Edmodo is a free, secure social network for teachers, students, and schools. It provides classrooms with a safe way to connect and collaborate by offering them place to exchange ideas, share content, and access homework, grades and school notices. Edmodo is accessible in any browser and from any mobile device. Like Diipo, Edmodo allows teachers to post messages, discuss classroom topics, assign and grade classwork, share resources and materials, and network and exchange ideas with peers. Edmodo does not have an age limit, students under the age of 18 must have a parent or guardian read the terms of service prior to use. To learn more about how Edmodo came to be, take a min to watch the video below:

While Diipo is in beta, Edmodo has stood the test of time and is used in classrooms around the world.

How to integrate Diipo and Edmodo into the classroom: Social networking is a wonderful way to support your students in their learning. It is also a way for students to take charge and support their own learning by collaborating with classmates. Use Diipo or Edmodo to organize your class, support students, connect students in a collaborative study group, and to share materials with your students. This is a great one-stop-shop for classroom communication and resources. Upload lessons and handouts, websites and links used in class, videos, and any other materials students may find useful to Diipo or Edmodo. Use the Diipo blogging platform to encourage your students to write for an audience, reflect on learning, continue class discussion, and write collaboratively.

Both Diipo and Edmodo promote anytime, anyplace learning-reinforcing once again that learning happens outside of the four walls of the classroom.

Using social networks in the classroom provides you with the opportunity to model proper use of social networking, digital citizenship, and teach Internet safety in an authentic environment.

Tips: Edmodo has excellent support and training, be sure to sign up for their free webinars!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Diipo and Edmodo in your classroom!

IDroo: Online educational multi user whiteboard

March 7, 2011Kelly Tenkely2 Comments4768 views

What it is: IDroo is an educational multi user whiteboard that lets students instantly collaborate online. Everything that is drawn or written on the whiteboard is visible to all participants in real-time. IDroo supports an unlimited number of meeting participants, the only limitations are computer power and internet connection speed. There is a professional math typing tool built-in making it easy to teach or work through math problems collaboratively. Best of all, IDroo can be used with Skype! IDroo is free for non-commercial use. Now for the downfall (and this is a HUGE downfall in my humble opinion), IDroo is currently only available for Windows. I know, disappointment for us Mac lovers. *sigh* If you are using a Windows computer this is a great way to collaborate online!

How to integrate IDroo into the classroom: IDroo would be a great app for collaborating with other classrooms around the world. Students can use the multi user whiteboard space to work together, share ideas, and brainstorm. IDroo would also be fantastic as a way for teachers to tutor students virtually. Set up an “open lab” time once a week online where students can drop in and get extra help. Virtual lab times are especially helpful for elementary students who can’t dictate their own schedules and often can’t stay after school for extra help.

Tips: Don’t forget to allow IDroo to access Skype API after you download!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using IDroo in your classroom!

Magnoto: Online blog, photo, video, creation space

February 17, 2011Kelly Tenkely4 Comments3605 views

What it is: Magnoto reminds me of a mashup of a Tumblr blog, Wallwisher, Glogster, and Stixy. Essentially Magnoto gives you a “magnetic” display where you can post and share text, audio, video, and pictures. My favorite feature of Magnoto: content can be added to the page via email. You can set up your Magnoto so that anything you send to your special Magnoto email address, automatically gets uploaded and placed on your online page. With a few minutes of setup when you create your account, you can create an online space that is updated from your email. This is great for teachers who aren’t as comfortable with technology or don’t have the time to manage an online space. I find the Magnoto online interface to be a little bit cumbersome (I expected everything to be drag and drop onto the page but it is much more “analogue” and you have to click “place on page” from the preview. Certainly not difficult but also not as clean as I would like…guess I’m spoiled!) On the upside, Magnoto provides a lot of room for customization in frames around the pictures (click on the “M” on the picture), “magnets”, and the ability to free drag items anywhere on the screen. The online page can be easily shared with a unique url that you choose, and updated on the fly. Magnoto also has the benefit of allowing up to 4 users to contribute to and create one online space.

How to integrate Magnoto into the classroom: For students with an email address, Magnoto can be used to create a flexible online space where students can create virtual posters, brainstorming boards, virtual project portfolios, and share learning with others. Students can work together on the same Magnoto space for group projects.

Teachers can use Magnoto to create a quick class homepage for students and parents to access. Because Magnoto is so easy to update via email, it makes for a really fast build with impressive results. Update daily with links, assignments, and resources for your students; pictures you snapped of learning; or to reference class information. Create a new Magnoto page for every subject, semester, or special project. Invite a few parents to join as users of your account and encourage those room moms (or dads) to email pictures they snap of class parties, field trips, or special events on the class Magnoto board- the pictures can be emailed to the special Magnoto address and will be instantly uploaded. Pretty cool! Magnoto would make for a great online weekly newsletter space. Parent’s will always be in the loop for classroom happenings and everything will be easy to access in one place.

Because you can add up to 4 collaborators, Magnoto would be a good space for grade level teams to collect and share resources for students. This keeps all of you from having to create and update a separate page; instead, you can all upload and share from the same space. Again, the email feature is really nice for this type of use!

To change your account settings to allow emailed content to be directly uploaded:

1. Click on the “Page Admin” tab on the right side of the screen.

2. Click on “Options”

3. Choose either “Classic” or “Floating” options

4. Click “Publish New Entries” via email at once

Tips: Magnoto is in Beta, I found that it works better in Firefox and Chrome than in Safari. Don’t forget that students can use a @tempinbox.com account or @mailinator.com account for sign up if they don’t want to use a personal email address. No email confirmation is necessary to begin using Magnoto.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Magnoto in your classroom!

Enter the Group: Making Group Project Easier

February 7, 2011Kelly Tenkely7 Comments3760 views

What it is: Enter the Group is a fabulous online tool that makes it simple to work with, and organize, groups online. The tool has similar functionalities to Wiggio. Enter the Group includes shared calendars, site email, file sharing, instant chat and message boards, the ability to create private groups and classrooms, tasks and assignments, polls, blogging, Twitter, and question/answer forum, and best of all: it is totally free! Enter the Group has some really nice classroom features that other online group management sites like Wiggio don’t have. The built in blog feature is useful for the classroom setting, it provides students with a place to reflect that can be set as “private” so that it is a closed network for your classroom or school. This is especially helpful in schools where administration and the school community is hesitant to enter the world of blogging! Enter the Group Classrooms provides a virtual classroom space that can act as an extension of the physical classroom. Teachers and students can interact, keep track of due dates and special events, share files, post messages, and more. Students can take their learning with them anywhere and access the resources they need anytime. Enter the Group is easy to use and has really helpful tips and video guidance throughout the tool. No matter what your technology ability level is, Enter the Group has made it easy to get started.

My favorite thing about Enter the Group? They understand that the classroom is about learning, from the classroom page: “What do we do in classrooms? Simple answer is we learn. The longer answer is we; listen, ask questions, start debates, get group feedback, work on assignments, take tests and exams, present our work and perhaps many other things I haven’t thought of as well. Should all these things stop once the bell sounds and the students walk out the door? We all know the answer is no.” Enter the Group isn’t about the technology, but about the learning opportunities that it enables.

How to integrate Enter the Group into the classroom: Enter the Group is a way to extend learning beyond the walls of your classroom. Use it to extend conversations, debates, and offer support through online discussion; help students (and parents) keep track of assignments and classroom events, keep track of and share files so students who are absent are never left behind, to collect shared resources and information (a kind of “digital textbook” that you create for/with your students); to expand on class topics with video; and to create a collaborative learning environment. Students can use Enter the Group to plan and organize projects that they are working on in groups, providing a virtual meeting space outside of the classroom to collaborate. Enter the Group is perfect for students who are out with an illness or to continue learning opportunities when pandemic illness or bad weather keeps us from the physical classroom (anyone had SNOW problems this year? 🙂 ) Enter the Group provides a platform where students can continue learning and collaborating from any Internet-connected computer.

Do you have students collaborating with another class in another state? Another country? Enter the Group is a great place for students to work together, discuss, debate, and share. The ability to create a private network adds a layer of security and manageability to the online group.

Enter the Group also makes a great platform for working with colleagues and for professional development. Share important dates, files, and reflections within the group. Enter the Group is a nice way to gather and share resources from one centralized location making it easy to add to, and grow, year after year. No more, “remember that great lesson we used last year? What was that site/resource again?” (I cannot tell you how many times I have had THAT conversation!)

Tips: Enter the Group provides a few options for sign-up. Teachers, parents, and students can sign up with an email address (don’t forget to use tempinbox.com or mailinaitor.com for temporary inboxes for students who don’t have an email account), Twitter, or Facebook. It would be nice if Enter the Group had a feature like Wiggio where group members could join without registering-this is really helpful in elementary classrooms.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Enter the Group in your classroom

Phile: Create a crowdsource guide around any passion

January 21, 2011Kelly Tenkely1 Comment2259 views

What it is: Phile is a fantastic new way for communities to “create a useful, lasting body of knowledge just by talking about the stuff you love.” Phile makes it easy for groups of people work together on building collections and discussions based on shared passions. Phile turns knowledge, opinions, and discussion into useful websites. Turn any passion into a community of collaborators by creating one place for them to gather. Phile lets you structure your site to gather the information that matters to your community of learners. Phile does an outstanding job of keeping your site organized as people add to it. Phile is truly as site all about conversation and sharing information. Phile automatically keeps all information organized and easy to find. A group creator creates and customizes the “stack” (site) design. Group members add and edit pages in the stack. Members can share resources, discuss in forums, on stack pages, etc. Recent activity is populated on the home page including new pages, reviews, comments, etc. Phile is currently a free service, the plan is to keep a portion of the service free with ad support and a paid service that has additional functionality. For now, Phile is in beta and completely free. Phile is fairly easy to navigate and has an intuitive interface. There are helpful hints and tips on ever page directing you in the use of Phile (great for those of us who are too busy to endlessly play!). I created a Phile for edreform, feel free to join me in collecting resources, article, videos, etc. relevant to the education reform discussion!

How to integrate Phile into the classroom: Phile is a great way for teachers to collaborate and share information. Phile could be used for starting a variety of groups that would help organize information in one, easy to access, place. Phile could be used to start a Children’s Literature group where members submit children’s books along with reviews, ratings and comments (any book-a-day people want to jump in and create that?).

Older students could join the group and add their own reviews, ratings, and comments on the books they are reading. This could become a place where teachers could quickly find literature that has been reviewed by other teachers, students, and parents.

Phile would make an excellent directory for ed conferences (and virtual conferences) held around the world. Because many of these conferences happen year after year, it would be a great place for new teachers to learn what is available to them and for veteran teachers to continue conversations and learn which conferences are rated as the most worthwhile and why.

Phile would be a great place for teachers world-wide to share, collaborate, and rate lesson plans, websites, videos, etc. in their area of specialty.

Phile is ideal for sharing iDevice apps for education, with the built in rating system and excellent organization it would make sharing and finding educational apps a breeze!

How about creating Phile’s for the discussions that happen in our education chats on Twitter every week? The Phile could contain information and links about the chat, important ideas and information that was shared during the chat, and give us a place to expand the conversation beyond the 140 characters when it was over. I’m imagining this for #edchat, it would be wonderful to have a place to send those who are new to #edchat to get a feel for the topics that we cover.

The possibilities with Phile are really endless, it is a fantastic platform that is like a mashup of a Ning and a wiki. The interface is really well designed, it makes information so easy to find and sort through.

As I said above, I created a Phile for edreform to be a collection of resources, articles, links, and discussion. Feel free to join and help me add to it. A Phile is only as good as its community!

Tips: Phile does require an email address for sign-up, it may not be appropriate for use with elementary students unless you are accessing it as a class.

Please leave a comment and share ideas for how you might use Phile in education. Anyone want to start a Children’s Literature Phile? I think it could be great! Let me know if you are interested and I will be happy to pass your name onto the developer of Phile.