The Super Book of Web Tools for Educators

The Best Resources for High Schools

DROPitTOme (http://www.dropitto.me/) is a free service that

works with Drop Box to allow people to upload files to your

Drop Box account without giving them access to the contents of your Drop Box account. For those not familiar with Drop Box it is a service that provides 2GB of free online file storage. You can access your Drop Box from any computer and most mobile devices. You can also sync it across multiple computers. DROPitTOme works by synchronizing with your Drop Box account. After connecting the two services DROPitTOme provides a url that you can give to others to upload files to your Drop Box account. You must specify a password that has to be entered before an upload can take place. Give the url and password to those people you want to be able to upload files to your Drop Box account. Why do I use DropitTOme? To eliminate the email inbox clutter that comes with having 100 students email me their assignments.

Everyday more students and more parents visit their

Facebook accounts than they do any other place on the web.

This year I took advantage of that situation by creating a

Facebook fan page for my course blog. On the fan page I post course-related information like assignments, outlines, and other materials through Facebook without having to check my blog separately. The information I publish on the fan page is essentially the same as on my blog and often contains links back to my blog. My hope in doing this is that my students will see course reminders when they log into their Facebook accounts.

By making the fan page public I'm also allowing the parents of my students to access course information in the same way as their children. Please note, that creating a Fan Page requires you to have Facebook account. Also note that just because a student or parent becomes a “fan� of your Fan Page that does not mean that they become your Facebook friend.

Leverage students' familiarity with Facebook for a history

lesson, Derrick Waddell created

a Facebook template for historical figures. This template

(http://bit.ly/gMWhWI), available through the Google Docs public template gallery, asks students to complete a Facebook profile for famous people throughout history. The template has a place for pictures, an "about me" section, a friends column, and a map to plot the travels of historical figures. Please note, this template will not result in an actual Facebook account being created. Creating a Facebook profile for a historical figure could be a good way for students to record some basic information about that person.

You could have each student in your class create a profile then have the students work together to figure out the connections between each historical figure. For example, I might have my US History students create profiles of the delegates to the Second Continental Congress then, as a group, determine the connections between the delegates.

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