Whisper for Google Classroom

Whisper is a brand new Chrome extension that works within Google Classroom. Whisper allows you to quietly send a message to an individual student or your entire class. This is perfect for those times when students are completely focused on their assignment and you don't want to interrupt them by making a verbal announcement. When we stop students while they are working, it can be almost impossible to get them all back on track. Whisper solves this issue by allowing teachers to share important messages without disrupting the class by talking.

Click here to read the directions for how to get started with Whisper.

Micro Mobs - Better Management of Email Threads

Micro Mobs is a free service for creating your own private group messaging forum. I initially reviewed the service last year. I recently received an email from them about some enhancements they've made to their service.

Micro Mobs now assigns an email address to each mob you create or join. This allows you to email updates and share files with your entire group within your email account. You can also move your group email threads from your inbox to your Micro Mobs mob. This eliminates inbox clutter by moving those long "reply all" threads out of your inbox. The third enhancement is better tracking of all images and links shared in your mob. Rather than having to sort through all of the threads to find an image or link you can find them all in one place with one click.

Applications for Education

Micro Mobs provides an easy way to create a private group messaging system for your students and staff. The new option to find shared links quickly could be handy in a course in which students share a lot of links. That feature could be helpful for my Global Studies students who are frequently sharing links to news stories and videos that they find online.