Collaboration Tools in Education - new partnership Dropbox and Klaxoon

Just like businesses, educators and students use a lot of collaboration tools in their daily work. Google for Education and Microsoft for Education are two the most popular, with apps like Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams. There are others, like Schoology, Edmodo and more, that are also used.

Dropbox, originally a cloud file storage and sharing app, has added a number of collaboration features over the last couple of years.

Dropbox and Klaxoon recently announced a partnership which allows interoperability and sharing between the platforms.

Dropbox Education aims to bridge the gap between the classroom and workspace by developing student collaboration, a soft skill employers are in need of. The new app also sponsors instructor success by increasing the pulse of the classroom.

Dropbox Education has partnered with Klaxoon, an innovative suite of applications allows instructors to integrate polls, word clouds, and other interactive tools into their classroom to increase student participation.


These tools all help educators and students work more collaboratively, and prepare for higher education and the workplace.

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Explain Everything - Collaborative Whiteboard on any platform

Explain Everything is a collaborative whiteboard app/site that is easy to use, has some great features, and works on all platforms, including Chromebooks (great for touchsreen ones). The free version includes access to viewer and collaboration features* of Explain Everything on iPad, Android, Chrome and Windows, and 100MB of storage on Explain Everything Discover. There are also premium versions with more features. 

Explain Everything allows you to create animations and presentations, with voice over, screencasts,  and collaborate on the projects. In addtion, there is a huge repository of projects people have created with Explain Everything that you can access and use. You can also import different files into Explain Everything to use in your project.

This is a great tool for teachers and students:

- lesson presentations

- student presentations and projects

- collaboration tool for remote projects

- remote study help

Available on the App Store, Google Play, Windows Store, and Chrome Web Store.
(Explain Everything™ Collaborative Whiteboard will be available in the US on March 16th)

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Padlet - free online multimedia notes and collaboration - great for projects

Padlet is a free service that lets you create online "sticky notes" that you can share and collaborate on. The notes can include images, links and videos, can be moved and arranged and can be embedded into a website.

It's great for brainstorming, story boarding, organizing, projects and more. It is available online and even has a Chrome app and extension, a Kindle app, Safari and Firefox extensions, and a Wordpress plugin.

It's easy to use and fun and very useful.

If you are looking for more features and the ability to have school accounts, privacy, control and more, take a look at Backpack (not free).

Related:

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Samepage - app to get more done with contextual collaboration

Slack - free, easy to use, communications/collaboration platform - great for teams and schools
Google for Education Resources






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TitanPad - free, simple online document collaboration

TitanPad is a free tool for collaborative writing on a single document. It is simple and easy to use and requires no sign in or login to create a public document., You can create a private document with a free account. 

It is similar to Google Docs, but much simpler. Up to 8 people can work on a single document at the same time, with their edits being color coded.

You can also import and export text to and from TitanPad.

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This can be very useful in education for quick collaboration sessions in the classroom or meetings. 

Take a look. 

Related:

More Collaboration Tools and Resources

More Writing Tools and Resources

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Filechat - collaborate on documents, pictures and videos in GDrive and Dropbox

Filechat is a new, free service that allows you to collaborate on documents, photos and videos in Dropbox or Google Drive. Instead of just commenting on a document or file, users can chat, like and vote on any of their files in Drive or Dropbox. You can even have multiple conversations with different teams or groups. It adds more "social" features to collaborate with others in a tailored caht room that is based in a file or folder.

Users can store their files in their preferred platform and use Filechat to collaborate with anyone. It also includes a search tool.

The "owner" of the Filechat discussion invites others to view and collaborate on the files and controls access. They can also give participants the ability to add files, vote and chat.

The mobile app allows you to get notifications, preview and edit files and participate in the conversations.

 

  

It is free, with premium levels coming shortly. It is available online and for Android and iOS. Support for OneDrive, Box and Amazon Cloud Drive are coming soon too.





Related:

Samepage - app to get more done with contextual collaboration

Slack - free, easy to use, communications/collaboration platform - great for teams and schools
Google for Education Resources





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