Managing Classroom Projects Using 30Boxes with a Little Help from Robocal

Using Web 2.0 Services to help manage projects and, generally speaking, as organizers for educators to use with students has been on my mind lately. Much of this has to due with a handful of conversations I've been having with Jane Krauss about how to use things like wikis, blogs, netvibes, Google aps, etc. as tools for teachers to use in creating project spaces to work with kids. For instance, she pointed the flatclassroomproject as a good example of this.

I've been using Netvibes a lot lately and have presented on some of its virtues to some administrators at a class at Lewis and Clark college along with some future leaders in the Beaverton District. While I think there are a number of great advantages to using Netvibes, it falls short in some areas; especially in helping to organize calendar-like information. Of course, you can subscribe to a calendar, but there isn't a native one.

30Boxes is an online calendar that I'm very fond of. With the addition of Robocal along with taking advantage of the social services (e.g. "Buddy Lists") that come along with it a teacher can do some pretty interesting things. I built this screencast to demonstrate the following things that you can do with 30Boxes:

• Configuring a calendar with homework assignments and other important due dates for a project (in this case, teaching Romeo and Juliet)
• Integrating a teacher's 30Boxes account with other Web services (e.g. a school home page rss feed)
• Taking advantage of the built-in to-do lists and Webtop view of 30 boxes
• Allowing buddies (the analogy for students) to view the calendar events
• Using Robocal to create a homework line for students and parents to call into to hear the upcoming assignments.

On 30Boxes, I've created two proxy accounts, one named teacherex@edtechservices.com which serves as the example of what a teacher would see and do and studentex@edtechservices.com which demonstrates what a student enrolled in teacherex's Romeo and Juliet class would see. If you'd like to view either of this profiles in more detail, add a comment and I'll send you the login info.

For Robocal, I simply visited www.robocal.com and created a new account linked to the 30Boxes calendar of teacherex@edtechservices.com. Robocal automatically generated the phone number, (407) 965-3679 (pin 1161#) for users to call. You're welcome to call it and give a listen. What you'll hear is the upcoming events from teacherex's calendar. Robocal also associates a voicemail box with every number which calls it, so you can "leave yourself a message." I haven't played around with that much, but it seems kind of interesting.

RoboCal - Text to Speech Phone Calendar

When it comes to online calendars, I tend to use either Google Calendar or 30boxes . I used to like Trumba, but they've gone a bit too comercial (very expenses plans, etc.). For quite a few of the folks I regularly work with like schools and non-profites both Google's calendar and 30boxes work just fine. In fact, when I'm not looking to connect calendar info with a specific set of applications/tools (as in part of Google's accounts) I tend to recommend 30boxes because it is very easy and intuitive to use. Additionally, it has some interesting built-ins like to-do lists, and a "Webtop" view which I think are outstanding. In looking around their forums, I came across an intersting mashup called Robocal . It takes you access info from either 30boxes or Google Calendar and sets up a phone number and PIN so that you can call it up and hear your calendar read to you - upcoming events, etc. Each "user" (as defined by the phone the call from) can leave a message or note for him/herself, as well. Although the robo-voice reading the calendar is the most elegant one in the world, it does a great job. For schools, there is the obvious advantage of essentailly enhancing accessibility to information. For an individual teacher, structuring a 30boxes calendar effectively using homework assignments, due dates and the like, would essentially build a "homework line" that students (and parents) could call.

I'm going to setup an example of that latter application shortly and will post an update when its done.