Saturday, July 24, 2010

Drop.io for English teachers

[updated November 2010 - a real shame - this service is to cease before Christmas]

Drop.io is a great tool for all teachers. It enables you simply to create 'drops' for documents and other files which your pupils can access (and contribute to) easily. If you have a blog like this one, you can insert a link for them to click on. Or just tell them the URL of the 'drop'.

For English teachers:
We give out lots of notes. Our pupils lose or 'mislay' them. We don't particularly feel like photocopying or emailing new copies. And many would find it handy to have electronic copies on their own laptops. Drop.io gives us an efficient (and free) facility to handle this.

So, for English teachers, for example:-
1. Go to Drop.io.
2. Create a memorable or significant 'drop name' on the left, such as drop.io/mrbrownsnotes
3. Click 'Create a Drop.'
4. Follow instructions for adding files, links etc.
5. Set a password (under Settings/Access Control) and give it to your pupils if you want the drop to be private.
6. Done.

The drop is set to expire after a defined time. So at the start of the academic year, we can set it to expire automatically in a year. The free version has generous amounts of space; there's also a paid version with more features.

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