Cramberry.NET - An online Flashcard System for teachers and students

Cramberry.net remixes an age old study helper, flash cards, and adds greater functionality, social interaction, and ease of use into one package.  The paramount idea for Cramberry seems to be its ease of use.  I had the opportunity to create a set of flash cards for a student that I tutor, and in less than 5 minutes, I had signed up for an account and was creating Flash Cards for this student.

When you create a new stack of flash cards (called a “set”) Cramberry asks for two items, a name for the set and if you would like to share the set of Flashcards with everyone on Cramberry.  If you choose to keep the stack private, Cramberry only allows you to access and use the set of Flashcards.  If you want other people to use the cards as well (for example, students in your class, or in my case the student who I tutor) you can check the box “Allow others to use this set”  and Cramberry provides a link to the set of Flashcards.  The only requirement for the person(s) you are trying to share with is that they also have a Cramberry account.  Once they do, they can simply click on the link that you provide, and the Flashcards appear, ready for use immediately.

Cramberry has a very spartan interface and it clearly understands that it is a Flashcard system and no more.  What Cramberry does well, it does very well.  I can see a couple areas for improvement, though.  For example, Cramberry does not allow any formatting of either the question or the answer.  This is ideal if the answer is simple a word or sentence, but if you are attempting to use Cramberry for more complex topics with bullet points, or images, Cramberry will not work for you. After I posted the original article, Cramberry commented (see below) and let me know that there is in fact a way to add simple formatting to a flash card using “Textile”.  Cramberry also informed us that there are new features on the horizon such as bulleted lists and paragraphs.  I can’t wait!

There is also no way to limit your Flashcards to specific users.  You can either share or not, there is no middle ground.  This may not matter to many, but if a teacher wants to use Cramberry for his/her class, and only those students, Cramberry does not allow that.

With that said, I was very impressed with Cramberry over all and am continuing to use it with the student who I tutor.  I can see Cramberry as a great solution for teachers who want to create a predefined set of study aids for their students, or students who want to improve their skills in a particular area.  I recommend you check out Cramberry.

Academic Earth provides a social wrapper for freely available course videos

Where can you find over 1,500 lectures from some of the top universities in the nation? http://www.academicearth.com. 

The great thing about Google Apps for Education is the power and features that you get in a free package.  A school that signs up for a Google Apps account can re-brand the interface to match their logo or mascot and the email system includes more that 7 gigabytes of data for each user (as well as Google’s industry level spam protection). Once you give your users an account through Google Apps, their email address becomes their username and anyone in the organization can share documents, information, and calendars with other people in the organization, or anyone in the world with any Google or Google Apps account.Google Apps for Education removes the hassle out of email system administration and allows your IT manager(s) to focus on more important things inside the building.  In order to set up a Google Apps for Education account, though, you will need help from the person who manages your website.

Google Apps is a great collaboration tool in almost any form that you would like whether it is email, chat, or through websites (and wikis).  I rely on the Google Apps ecosystem on a daily basis and set it up as the standard email management system for all of my clients.  If you are frustrated with your email, or wish that your school had more collaboration technology, check Google Apps for education out. I highly recomend it!

Please Note: If you are not an educator or member of an educational establishment, you can still get Google Apps for business. As long as you have less than 50 users, the system is still free.  Also, I believe that registered non profit organizations can get the system free as well.

Jing resides on the top of your screen. Always ready to capture.

Jing is a software application produced by the same company that has brought us the famous Camtesia and Snagit software suit.  Techsmith, I believe has produced a killer application for quickly producing tutorials and guides based on computer screenshots or screen video captures.  Unlike camtesia and snagit, Jing resides at the top of your screen, ready to be used at a moment’s notice.

Screen captures are as simple as pressing the capture button and then dragging across your screen to select the portion of the screen you want to capture.  From there you can select if you want to capture video with audio naration or still images.  Once you have captured your images or video you can annotate the images with arrows, text etc.

Finally, Jing allows you to easily share your images and videos by e-mailing, instant messaging, pasting into documents, uploading online or to screencast.com.   Screencast.com for free, gives you 2gb of storage as well as 2gb of transfer a month, making it a very easy solution for quick screencast sharing.  Video after the break.