Notely helps students get organized

Organization, study skills, and time management are three very important skills for any learner, but especially for distance learners.  If you want to help your students build these skills, have them try out Notely.

With Notely, students have one space for all their course notes, schedules, to-do lists, brainstorming sessions, contacts, uploaded files, and more.  They can also add friends so they can share notes and materials. As an added bonus, there are mobile phone and iPhone versions of this software so students can stay connected from anywhere.

Mobile Reminders

I’ve been looking for a quick, easy, instantaneous way of getting info out to my learners. You know the deal – reminders about those upcoming assignment deadlines, encouraging words for deeper social presence, etc.

Since almost everyone has cell phones, I concentrated on mobile technology for my search. I found two possible tools to help: Joopz and AbbyMe. Each has their pros and cons (like all tech).

Joopz
This tool allows you to send and receive SMS messages (text messages on your phone) from a web browser. The messages can be sent immediately or scheduled in advance (woohoo!) and sent to individuals or up to groups of 10. The free version of this service lets you send 50 SMS a month. See Joopz for more info.

AbbyMe
This tool makes it possible for you to send phone calls from a web browser. The calls can be sent immediately or scheduled in advance and they can be sent to individuals or groups (no limit that I can tell). You type in your message and it gets converted to voice on the receiving end. See AbbyMe for more info.

Comparisons
Both of these tools were so easy to use – from account creation to sending the messages (I sent practice messages to myself). One concern I have is that not every person on the planet has an SMS capable phone – that would mean using AbbyMe instead. On the other hand, some folks (especially the 20something crowd) have unlimited SMS but only a handful of cell phone minutes at their disposal. So, for that crowd, Joopz would be better. I do like that you can have Joopz forward SMS responses to your phone if you’re away from your browser. That two-way capability does increase social presence… On the other hand, you can include media files with your message in the AbbyMe service. Neither require the learner to create a new account or sign up for anything.

I think I’ll give both of them a try and see what happens. Of course, I’ll get permission first from each of them. It’s probably not a good thing to send SMS to folks without asking since they have to pay for them.