Trello

Here's how I found out about this winner - I googled "best online collaborative tools," read a list and saw Trello commented about by loads of people. I'm glad I checked it out!

It reminds me of when I wrote a research paper on panda bears when I was in second grade and when I did another research paper in 9th grade (education in Japan, I think) and my teachers made me write one fact per notecard. This is that but online so you can add pictures, attachments, links, etc. and share it all with your group. I think this would be a great tool for group projects because it's very easy for a teacher and group to see who has posted what (and who hasn't posted at all), and organizing is easy because you can move the cards around just by dragging them. The headings (in the above pic they are "beginner," "intermediate,"and "advanced") but they could be changed to anything you wanted (pre-WWI, During the War, Post-War Effects, for example). I started a board for Macbeth because last year was my first year teaching it, I teach it with another 10 Quest teacher, and it would be easy to do separate columns for different scenes, themes, characters, etc. I can also see it being an easy place to link online videos or pictures that you want to show the students without any frantic hunting. Checklists can be made to help teams organize - I could see having each student group start a checklist and add on as necessary as well as check off as items are finished. That would help me see where groups are quickly. For my own use, I could see my PLC planning different units and activities on this one board so it's all in one place - as opposed to binders all over the place or even dropbox (which I use) where it seems files get misplaced or mislabeled pretty easily.

I haven't used it enough to discover many cons - people online who were raving about it had been using it for a while and liked how it worked with a team of people.

Reading over my post, I can see that I'm all over the place with discussing my planning with Trello, as well as student groups, and PLCs. All in all, it feels like an easy-to-use tool that could serve a lot of different collaborations effectively.

This could enhance the professional experience for teachers because it allows people to contribute where ever they are and it keeps a sort of running list of ideas and resources that can be added to or chatted about any time (as long as you have wifi). It's also flexible, which teachers require in order to tailor it to their needs and preferences.

This replaces those old notecards (thank goodness - ugh!) and amplifies that system because it increases the efficiency in having links, pics, attachments, etc.