With the start of school just around the corner, I wanted to share some of the recent additions we’ve made to our technology tool-kit.  In my last post I briefly highlighted iFolder, our new personal backup and remote access solution.  Today I’d like to focus on Interact, an open source (i.e. free) learning community platform that will serve as our electronic homework exchange solution.

Although Interact is a full featured elearning platform something akin to Moodle, at this point we are utilizing it solely for collecting and returning student work.  Of the many options available, we selected Interact because it is simple, secure, and being web-based, will even work for teachers and students who aren’t part of the 1:1 program.

Document exchange through Interact is similar to working with e-mail attachments but with a few major advantages.  First, when students upload homework to their Interact course(s), they have a time-stamped, electronic record (and copy) of their submitted assignments; no worries about lost e-mails or missing attachments.  When teachers are ready to begin grading, student work for each course can be downloaded en masse as a zip file; one “save as” collects all the students’ assigments.  When the individual documents are opened and inked (i.e. graded), the student’s name is automatically appended to the file name; no worries about keeping track of what belongs to whom.

Getting started with Interact only takes a few minutes and ultimately will save time and materials as we move toward an efficient, paperless environment.  For more information, you can follow this simple tutorial or contact me for further assistance.

Posted: 08|15|08 at 7:58 am. Filed under: 1:1, Applications.
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