iPod Contest Winner

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Congratulations to MrZecker,
the winner of September’s success story iPod contest!

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* MrZecker, you are going to get an email from us for details. Thanks.
 

Here is MrZecker’s ThinkFree Story 

How ThinkFree has Helped Me:
A Case Study in Public Education

My Company and the Industry I Am In...

I work for a High School in a Public School in the Northeast United States. I teach Secondary English, and have gained the position as a technology team leader in my department. My job is to teach english literature to my Sophomore and Senior classes, and also to help other staff members troubleshoot and fix common application and system errors.

The industry of public education is an overwhelmingly under funded industry with high demands of those that work in it. With the new requirements of No Child Left Behind, it seems that we are becoming an industry that is stretched extremely thin with extremely high social and financial demands, and none of the resources needed for the ultimate success desired.

The Business Problem

The business problems that exist in a public school are many. When technology is brought into the equation and teachers that have worked with a chalkboard and mimeograph machine for many years are expected to understand the extremely fast-paced and fast-changing world of technology and incorporate it into their resource management, classroom practices, and student relationships, it seems that this is where they are left behind.

The problem grows as the resources in a given building are unreliable because of their age, their performance, their outdated software, and the heavy-duty wear and tear of being used by hundreds of students every day who have no regard that these computers do not need to be inundated with the latest messaging, screensaver, or other adware and virus-riddled software. The computers simply do not perform up to the task all of the time.

The problem becomes even deeper as the faculty of institutions become more accustomed to the demands of a 21st century classroom, and they have to communicate with the students emailing and sharing their virus-ridden documents, spreadsheets, and presentations that they saved on their computer that is itself bogged down with the adware and viruses that they grace the school computers with.

But this is where the unbelievable power and dynamic adaptability of ThinkFree comes in.

How ThinkFree helped me and my fellow faculty members deal with the business problem we were facing.

ThinkFree has become an invaluable asset in my classroom as well as in the classrooms of my fellow teachers in the department, the floor, the building, and the school district. it has also become an invaluable tool to the students as well as the cross-faculty communication in so very many ways.

Foremost, on the simple operational side of communicating with coworkers on lesson plans, unit plans, and other heavily trafficked documents in any educational institution, ThinkFree has presented an unadulterated, no nonsense tool that makes our lives and communication that much easier. In the past, if we emailed documents to one another or opened them on another person’s computer, there was no guarantee that anything about the original document would be the same. From simple things such as formatting to just simply being able to open the document because of software cross-compatibility or redundant old builds, ThinkFree has done nothing less than completely ensured that any given document can be opened and edited by anyone at anytime in the faculty. Sharing documents and cross-collaboration has been a snap, easily adopted and easy to use by any skill level.

In classroom practices, ThinkFree has allowed faculty members to smoothly move from the classroom to the library to the lunchroom to their home and still be able to bring their grade book, lesson plans, presentations, and assignments wherever they choose to go and whenever they have time to work on them. Students have the same luxury. To move to a computer lab and be able to work on a research paper, save it, and be sure that the document will be exactly as they had left it no matter what computer or computer lab they happened to be in the next class the next day or the next week allows for extremely focused and worriless instruction.

In teaching, examples can be spelled out right in front of students as documents are shared, and edited from there. Mass course assignments where each student could contribute at any time, as well as many other innovative and new teaching and learning opportunities would be virtually impossible before ThinkFree, as well.

Finally, in grading and organizing the massive amount of paperwork, course loads, assignments, and presentations that have passed across every teacher’s desk has been literally a dream. All any given student needs to do is write their paper, plug in the data to the spreadsheet, or finish the presentation, and click share. Then all the teacher needs to do is open the document on their time. Assignments are posted and shared as they are completed. The best part? Excuses work only as hard as the student in coming up with them. After all, it would take virtually an innumerable amount of dogs to ‘eat’ the internet.

Statistically, every classroom’s response to the ThinkFree approach to learning has been limited only by the students that do not have access to the internet because of location or cost. My courses alone are running an astounding 85% success rate, even where there is a level of 60 - 70% of students in any given room having internet access. That means that students are actually making the effort to go to a friend’s house or the public library to complete the assignments and participate through ThinkFree. 100% of students participate when it is an in-school assignment.

I am extremely grateful to ThinkFree for developing this fantastic software that is dynamic in so many ways. In my position, profession, industry, and for the sake of my students and coworkers, ThinkFree has been a tool unlike any other that I have ever used. ThinkFree is the definitive internet application that has been promised for quite some time as bringing through a new era on the internet of collaborative thinking, borderless sharing of information, and widespread compatibility.

>> For more story, please visit here

Contest Details

• What: Win a free 30GB iPod -video capable
• When: The contest period starts at the beginning of each month and closes at the end of each month
• How: All entries must be published to our DocExchange with the Tag: iPod_BCS_2006.
  Case studies submitted without that Tag will not be entered.
• For more details please check here. Each individual can only be invited one time.
• Check back here next month to see who wins the contest.