using Evernote and Dropbox with learners to communicate and share
resources.
Set up an Evernote (evernote.com) account and download the app to your
pc, your mac, and your phone. Any note you create on your pc
automatically syncs to your phone (so reminders, to dos, directions
etc are easy to access).
So if you have an account that you have set up to share with learners,
and they use the same account details for their phone/computers, any
note that you create can be accessed on their phones. Use it to share
lesson summaries, curriculum factoids, to dos, deadlines etc. Learners
can create new notes (text, voice, photos) on their mobiles or at
their computers and these sync to the same account. At the next
lesson, you have access to rich media resources created by the
learners to explore! You can set up 'notebooks' for each learner to
help sort the notes.
Dropbox (dropbox.com) does the syncing thing but with files. Create an
account that you are willing to share with learners and download and
install dropbox on your pc. (Dropbox doesn't work on mobiles). It
appears as a folder in My Documents. You simply put files in there
that you want to share with learners, and if they have downloaded and
installed dropbox using the same account details, they will
automatically have the same files on their computer. Also a good way
for the learner to share files with the whole class. You can also put
files in the public folder and copy a link - this is useful if you
have a large file to share with people - instead of emailing it, put
it in a dropbox and send the link to the file.
I know tutors who are going to try this out with learners so I'll
report on their findings when we have something to report.
