Tech4learning

New Things in the Box

One of my early blog postings was about the web-based file storage and sharing service, Box.net.  At the time I thought that the file sharing aspect would be good support for a collaborative learning situation.

Now they've recently added a number of features which actually help to more clearly position this service as possible collaborative learning platform:

Tasks enables you to build a workflow around a specific content item, such as review a document (maybe an assigment), upload a new version (i.e. the completed assignment) and approve it (aka grade it).

Global Folders enables you to open up a folder to a wider audience in the form a specific website, either pubically or for an invited audience only.  This would enable you to post the entire content for a course online.

Web Documents brings the power of the wiki to your Box.net account.  You can create to-do lists, share research, write meeting notes and draft documentation with your invited collaborators.

With just these three features Box.net has turned their file hosting service into a much more powerful tool that would support collaborative learning.

Huddle and Collaborate

Digging deeper into LinkedIn, I noticed an application link for a web-based collaborative working tool, Huddle.

Now I've used other similar tools in the past such as Google Sites and BaseCamp, all of which had their pros and cons.  So I was keen to take a look and seeing that it was also free to start with this tool, I took the plunge and signed up.

As well as a homepage that doubles as your dashboard, you can use whiteboards that offer similar features to some of the more rudimentary wikis, assign tasks to yourself and others (with the ability to add deadlines in - a feature amazingly often overlooked by competing systems), hold threaded discussions and organise online meetings, as well as maintain profiles of team members.

With regard to the online meetings, although not offering a true web-conferencing system, you can integrate other tools by including a link to that platform within the meeting invitation.  But what I was really pleased to see was the automatic inclusion of an integrated teleconferencing service, with a good spread of dial in numbers for European countries, including a very favourable call rate of 8p per minute for the UK.  Using this service in conjunction with a free web-conferencing service such as DimDim, which only offers a US dial-in number, would be a great combination.

Another attractive feature of Huddle was the ability to create Word and Excel documents without having to have either of these packages installed on your computer.  The web-based software for this is provided by the popular Zoho service.  It was a shame that they don't yet offer the option to use Zoho's presentations software package.

You can enjoy the service for free, but when you outgrow your 1GB storage limit, you can upgrade to other packages for a monthly fee.