Hackpad - A Simple Wiki Platform

Hackpad is a new, simple wiki service that I learned about from one of Jackie Gerstein's Tweets earlier this week. People who have used services like TitanPad or PrimaryPad will notice a lot of similarities in the user interface between those services and Hackpad.

At the simplest level Hackpad can be used for collaborative note-taking and writing outlines. Beyond that Hackpad allows you to include video and images by simply copying and pasting links into the document that you're working on. If you have Dropbox files that you want to link to, you can do that on Hackpad too. The layout options on Hackpad are very limited, but you can create a table of contents with links in the margins of your Hackpad page. To organize all of the Hackpads that you participate in, you can create a Hackpad collection in your account.

There are two sharing options for your Hackpad pages. You can make the pages public and open to everyone with the link or the pages can be private and viewable only to the people you invite. Joining Hackpad can be accomplished by using your Google account, your Facebook account, or by creating a Hackpad-specific account.

Applications for Education
Hackpad's tag line is "the best wiki ever." I'm not sure that it's the best wiki ever, I'm still partial to Wikispaces, but Hackpad is quite nice. If you're looking for a clean, simple platform for your students to use to create outlines together, share notes, or build reference pages, Hackpad is definitely worth giving a good look.

Class Connect - Share, Find, and Connect on Lessons

Last week I was contacted by a nice young man and student named Eric Simons who was seeking some feedback on his new service. The service is called Class Connect.

The basic purpose of Class Connect is to provide a place for teachers to store all of the digital materials associated with their lesson plans. Teachers can store documents, images, video files, and websites (bookmarks). To help you keep your materials organized, Class Connect provides a tagging system. The tagging system allows you to use custom tags or assign Common Core standards tags from the standards menu. If you choose, you can share your materials with colleagues. Class Connect provides an option for collaboration on shared materials.

There is a community aspect to Class Connect. If you choose to, you can make your materials public so that they can be searched and viewed by other Class Connect users. There are two ways to search for lesson materials in Class Connect. You can search the shared materials by keyword or search by Common Core standard.

Applications for Education
By our good nature, teachers like to share. Class Connect makes it easy to share our best resources with each other. Sometimes it's by seeing what others have done to teach a topic that we get our best ideas for our own lessons. Maybe you are looking for a new way to teach a topic or need an idea to get your lesson plans started, have a search in Class Connect. And if you benefit from the sharing of others, return the Karma and share some of your own good resources.

Use Custom HTML and Javascript in Google Sites

This afternoon the Google Docs and Sites team announced some very useful enhancements to both products. To me, the most exciting news in the announcement is that you can now use custom HTML and Javascript in your Google Sites pages. I have long be frustrated by how difficult, impossible actually without a lot of work arounds, it is to use many custom widgets like some of these survey tools in Google Sites. Now if you want to use custom HTML, Javascript, or CSS in Google Sites all you have to do is select the "HTML box" from the "insert menu" then paste your code. Read Google's directions here.

In the same announcement I learned that you can now search for, highlight, and copy text in the scanned PDFs that you have stored in your Google Docs account.

The comments feature in Google Docs is great for collaboration on documents and presentations. Now you can find all of the comments for a document or presentation in one column by clicking the new "discussions" button which is located just to the left of the "share" button on your documents and presentations.

Applications for Education
I am most excited about the custom html and Javascript option in Google Sites. That removes a major limitation to customizing the pages in websites built in Google Sites. Now you can add things like educational games, custom flashcard applications, survey tools and more to your Google Sites website.

New Google+ Safety Center for Teens, Parents, and Educators

Today, Google+ opened to students 13 years old or older. As ZDNet reported, in conjunction with opening Google+ to teenagers Google opened a new Google+ Safety Center. The Google+ Safety Center features a couple of guides to Google+ settings and functions for teens and their parents. The section for teens isn't much more than a basic introduction to Google+ settings, but the section for parents provides some solid advice and answers to common concerns that parents have about their teens use of social media.

In addition to information about Google+, the Google+ Safety Center offers resources from Common Sense Media about anti-bullying practices and digital reputation management.

Applications for Education
If you're considering using Google+ with your teenage students, you might have some parents with concerns about having their children using the service. The materials provided in the Google+ Safety Center could help ease their minds.

Some of the features of Google+ that could be of use to students are screen sharing and document sharing in Hangouts. Those two services could be helpful for peer editing and or peer tutoring. You and your students could also use the Concept Board app in Google+ Hangouts for collaborative brainstorming sessions.