Group items tagged

Open source social network.

Similar to parts of Edutopia and the WordPress Buddypress plugin, TeachAde hosts a number of useful discussion groups and offers plenty of free education resources. Billing itslef as "the first social networking website designed specifically for educators that is completely free and easy to use," TeachAde promises a host of activities, nearly 60,000 resources, core materials, a daily digital planner, and even a 'find a colleague' feature that I personally find the most compelling reason to try out the site. After all, isn't connected learning all about actually, you know, connecting with your fellow learners? TeachAde holds great promise and all the parts are there. Now it just needs your help and input. I've been tinkering with TeachAde for a few weeks now and it's proven to be very useful for finding peer-reviewed resources.

This is one of the fastest-rising educational social networks you should know about. Twiducate got me excited from the start with the unique approach to setting up your classroom online: the teacher does all the work and then students just get a simple code to punch in. Then, voila! They're all set up and have an account! Twiducate was started in 2009 and focuses on giving teachers more control than they'd typically expect to find in a free social network. Twiducate is all about creating a "safer online learning environment" and it shows. The site, even from the start as I mentioned, takes great care in putting the power of the tool in the hands of the teacher. Whether you agree with the tact or not, it's worth checking out Twiducate.

Billed as an "education 2.0 social network for your class," Diipo reminds me more of Edmodo and some Blackboard applications rather than Pinterest or your standard social network. That's a good thing. Diversity and competition are wonderful for this kind of environment. Like Edmodo and other tools of that ilk, Diipo offers plenty of 'community' tools such as a group discussion area, direct messaging, student project management, class rosters, microblogging, a knowledgebase, and the ability to upload and share files. That last one is my favorite and seems to be one of the most useful ways to start with Diipo. Don't want to use Dropbox or unsure about other cloud-hosted services? Diipo (to me at least) has shown itself to be a simple and secure way to effectively upload and share digital resources for your class only.