Instructify

Pencils? Check.

Notebooks? Check.

Online word processor application? Check.

In addition to standbys like pens, pads, and the ever-popular Trapper Keeper, today’s learners need a new set of school supplies, too.  These tools enable students to take advantage of the new learning possibilities the Web has to offer, such as making research easier, or finding better, cheaper ways of doing what they’re already doing.

In that spirit, here’s my top 10 new-school school supplies (all of which, by the way, are completely free).

1. OpenOffice — Why pay a bunch of money to Microsoft when you can get top-quality, MS-compatible programs for free? The OpenOffice suite packs a word processor, spreadsheets, presentation software, graphics software, and a database program. The open-source OpenOffice can do pretty much anything Microsoft Office can do, except drain your bank account.
2. A Cell phone — Whether it’s for podcasting, conducting surveys, or staying organized, the cellular phone has a huge amount of educational potential for those who know how to use it.
3. Remember the Milk –Back in my day, I wrote inky scribbles on my palm to stay organized. Today’s kids have Remember the Milk, which can keep track of assignments, activities, chores, and all applicable due dates and priorities. It also has fewer smudges.
4. Diigo — Invaluable for research, Diigo lets students bookmark and annotate webpages so they won’t forget why they bookmarked a page in the first place. They can also read other folks’ notes or annotations for further insight. Like any good Web 2.0 tool, Diigo lets them share their bookmarks and annotations with friends, too.
5. BibMe — Once students have found some great sources on Diigo, how do they cite them? Nobody has the time or energy to leaf through their MLA style manual to find the proper citation format for a newspaper article or whatever. If your students can muster the effort to enter a title, author, or ISBN number, BibMe will do the hard part and churn out a citation pre-formatted for the bibliography. If only the entire research paper process was this simple.
6. Google Docs — Does many of the things OpenOffice does. Google Docs also adds a collaborative element, as multiple students will be able to edit a document, spreadsheet or presentation.
7. OpenDrive – No more excuses about hard drive crashes. OpenDrive offers 1GB of storage online. Students can sync it with files on their hard drive for backups, collaborate with friends on projects, or use it to store their ever-expanding music collection. And for the time being at least, it’s free.
8. VoiceThread — A slideshow with a soundtrack, VoiceThread lets students tell stories visually as well as textually. Easily upload video, audio, even record narration via their cell phone (I told you those things were handy), with any luck VoiceThread will replace PowerPoint.
9. Adobe Photoshop Express Beta — If you thought Microsoft Office was expensive, check out the price tag for Adobe Photoshop. Fortunately, Photoshop Express Beta performs most of the photo editing functions students will need without costing a cent. They don’t even have to download anything. Now that’s express!
10. PB Wiki — Wikis are great for class projects and to cross-reference other pieces of information. And PB Wiki makes setting up a wiki a breeze, even if you don’t know a wiki from a blog.

As with any top 10 list, I had to exclude other worthy applications. Now’s your chance to tout your favorites (or to tell me what a jerk I am) in the comments. -BILL FERRIS

UPDATE: Okay, so cell phones aren’t exactly free. However, your students probably own them already, and most of the educational uses for them won’t cost you anything to implement.

Photo credit: jgodsey on flickr

When I got my first computer before going to college, it amazed me with its massive 366MB of memory. How would I ever use all of it? That computer cost nearly $2000.

Since then, hard drives have gotten a lot bigger and a lot cheaper. Want proof? OpenDrive Beta will give you a gigabyte of storage for free.

OpenDrive is like an online hard disk for backing up data or sharing files with others. Collaborate in real time using OpenDrive’s Collaboration Pro feature. You can also sync with uploaded files, so if you update your novel-in-progress, OpenDrive will save your changes both on your computer and in the copy you’ve squirreled away online.

Years from now we’ll laugh at the idea of a paltry gigabyte of storage. Until then, feel free to marvel at OpenDrive’s massive amount of memory. And you can’t beat the price. -BILL FERRIS

UPDATE: Dizzy with the possibility of all that free storage, I forgot to put a link in the article. You can try out OpenDrive by clicking here.

OpenDrive Beta

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I didn’t have a working printer when I was in school, and even if I had a working printer I would have probably never had paper or ink. I was unprepared, but I wasn’t entirely helpless. Keep in mind this was at a time when flash drives were luxury items and way before Google Docs. I had this method for handing in essays: type the paper, attach the Word doc in an email from one account to a separate email account, and finally print it out at the computer lab. Most of the time it worked…except when I would forget to attach the file and not realize it until after the 30 minute bus ride to campus.

Somebody at GradeMate must’ve heard me cursing my own foolishness, because storing files for your classes is one of their features (I don’t have an exact number on how much you can store, perhaps you might discover this during your own investigation and post a comment). Other useful features include managing your classes and setting up reminders, but the most useful by far is keeping track of your grades. That revelation shouldn’t make your mind explode - the site is called GradeMate, after all. You can add multiple assignments, exams, and projects, then set weight amounts and enter scores.

Take a moment to think about your students. Think about that student who obsesses over grades. What about the kid who can’t remember a due date to save her life? Or how about that student who was going to email himself his essay and print it out in the computer lab, but forgot to attach it to his email?
–NICK YINGLING

GradeMate

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In high school, I swore off backpacks. Therefore, my goal was to carry as few things as humanly possible. So I would get one of those huge 5-subject notebooks which worked great for that purpose; that is, until the end of the semester approached, and it would be practically exploding with a disorganized mess of notes and papers. What I would have given for a laptop and Springnote.

In essence, Springnote is a wiki, but really it’s like a virtual three-ring binder that you can share online. It works similarly to Google Docs, but it’s hyper-organized and super easy to use. All of your documents are organized into a drop-down tree menu with categories and tags, so you can see and access all of your content quickly. And with two gigs of space and the ability to add attachments and embedded links and images, what more could you ask for?

Well, the text editor is simple and intuitive, you can set your documents as private or public, and you can invite collaborators to edit documents, too. Springnote is a great tool for sharing class notes with your students, having your students work on group projects together, or even for collaborating with colleagues on event planning with to-do lists and details and everything you need all in one shareable place.

It’s probably too early to rid the world of backpacks entirely, but it’s a start. - LAUREN FROHNE

Springnote

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Take Notely

Oooooosaaaahhhhh! I just keep saying this site’s name over and over again. Ooooosaaahhhhhh!Okay, okay, I’ll stop. Anyway, Oosah is a neat Web-based application that lets you upload photos, music and videos — or use the media you already have uploaded to your Flickr, Facebook and YouTube accounts — to make multimedia slideshows, which they call “oosahs.”

But Oosah is more than just a place to make slideshows, it’s also an entire Web-based file management system. And, you have 2 gigs of space to play with for free! You can upload your photos directly to the site and easily manage them, or use it to safely store your videos and music files — whatever you want!

Oosah is emphatically not a file sharing site, like Mediafire or YouSendIt, though; it’s a user-generated content hosting, management, and sharing site. The content you or your students put on Oosah is only available for others to see if you make it public. And even the content you make public can only be viewed by others on Oosah, not downloaded or accessed in any other way. It’s open to anyone who is at least 13 years old and it has an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, so it’s the perfect place for your students to manage their media and get creative with slideshows and multimedia.

Keep in mind, though, that Oosah is still in beta, so expect some kinks here and there. I had a little trouble using photos from my Flickr and Facebook accounts to make a slideshow, but uploading files directly to the site worked super smoothly.

Oooooosaaaahhhhh! That was the last one, I promise. -LAUREN FROHNE

Oosah

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I’m always sharing some kind of large file with friends and co-workers—photos, PowerPoint presentations, or zip files with years worth of documents. Sometimes, these just get too big for e-mail, so I’m stuck using a file-sharing service on the Web. Sure, there are tons of sites for sharing large files, but most of them use infuriating tactics to entice me to buy a premium membership.

After months of using services that forced my friends to wait for downloads to begin, I found drop.io, a free service that allows me to upload files quickly and allows my friends to download them quickly as well. Drop.io doesn’t ask users to sign up, log in, or divulge any information beyond how long shared files should stay on the server—drop.io will store them for up to a year. Once you’ve created a “drop,” you can add files to it by e-mail, web, phone, or fax. Drops stay private until you publicize them, too, as opposed to other file-sharing sites that are indexed in Google.

Drop.io limits files to a sizeable 100MB and has several options for displaying and storing different kinds of files. The interface is elegant and ad-free, which means that I no longer suffer the embarrassment of sharing files with colleagues, only to have them see inappropriate or ridiculous banner ads. –ROSS WHITE

drop.io

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Back up Your Data with Mozy

If a hard drive crash scares you more than a house fire, you need to back up your data. Pictures, documents, music, all of it could be history. Fortunately, you can back it up safely and cheaply with Mozy.

Mozy gives you your first 2GB of data free. To salvage more than that, it costs a measly five bucks a month. But you can store a lot with 2GB–that’s a good chunk of photos, a few vital albums, and even your unfinished novel you’ve been kicking around for years. -BILL FERRIS

Mozy

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Note: I heard about Mozy from Leslie Fisher at the NCaect conference. She’s knows about lots of gadgets and do-dads. Check out her site!

It’s high time you started using Google Docs. In their ongoing efforts to take over the world, Google has created a free online word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application. There’s nothing to download, you can save in Microsoft Office formats, and you can share your documents online with as many (or as few) people as you want.

We realize Google Docs have been around for a while. But you can now access your online documents easier than ever before with the new Google Docs Bar. This Firefox extension lets you access all your Google Docs with only one click of the mouse. You can also easily upload documents for collaboration, or for a backup copy.

Of course, you need to use the Firefox Web browser to use the Docs Bar. Honestly, though, you ought to be using Firefox anyway. Once you add the Google Docs Bar extension, you’ll be able to access any file you need, anywhere you have an Internet connection. -BILL FERRIS

Google Docs
Google Docs Bar

This utility means you’re never more than two clicks away from peace of mind. If you’re a Windows user, Backup to Email sends a backup copy of important files to your email address. The best part? Rather than logging on to your email, filling out your address, adding an attachment, then giving up because of the hassle and swearing you’ll do a full-scale backup “over the weekend,” Backup to Email takes about three seconds, and works for any file type. It splits large files so your inbox won’t be overwhelmed by one behemoth attachment.

Remember: a failure to plan is a plan for failure. And a hard drive failure can drive you to smack your head against a hard surface. This is a fast solution that beats burning a bunch of fragile CDs, and is infinitely better than “I’ll back up my files tomorrow.” –BILL FERRIS

Backup to Email

Does it bother you that when someone asks for that great PowerPoint presentation you use, you can’t e-mail it to them because your school e-mail account won’t let you send attachments larger than just a few kilobytes? Sure, you could toss it on a thumb drive and schlep on over to your colleague’s classroom… assuming she’s in the building. You could burn through your budget by burning the information to CD. Or, you could just use MediaFire, a file hosting service that doesn’t require registration and will let you upload files up to 100MB.

MediaFire will store your files for up to 7 days if you don’t register, so you’ll have to make sure to send the links to your content out pretty quickly, but it’s worth it to not have to provide your personal information to yet another site. That anonymity also makes it perfect for transferring student files, eliminating the time-honored excuse “The school system e-mail server ate my homework.” But beware- neither you nor your students should include any personal information in the file that you wouldn’t want shared. It’s great for that classroom PowerPoint or a zip file with a student’s project in HTML; it’s not suitable for report cards, address lists, or answer keys. -ROSS WHITE

MediaFire

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eSnips

eSnips is a file sharing site that allows you to sign up, search, share and maybe even sell your own snippets of life. Whether it’s music, paintings, video, or poetry, you can upload up to 1 GB of, well, stuff. Most any file format is uploadable into easily created folders, which you can then make public, private, or specific to certain groups comprised of members of your choosing. You can have as many folders as you need, and then its up to you to promote your content.

The uploading process is easy with a tool bar, and you can then apply tags so other members can search. Personalization is easy and maybe a little fun, since you can constantly make changes and additions to your profile, including video introductions and personalized greetings. eSnips is a great resource for those just peeking around, too, because of all the user generated content and sharing, most of it is free to use. –JEREMY S. GRIFFIN

eSnips