I Teach People

Schematic about drop.io

Imagine having your organization’s or school’s documents stored online in a private, secure cloud where you could view, download and exchange files with colleagues, chat and enjoy presentations by others, all within the same website. Imagine if it cost under $600 a year and didn’t require an IT department to load it, maintain it, or run it. Welcome to drop.io!

“About drop.io: users can take anything [photos, videos, audio, web links, emails, etc.] and add them to a private, online space called a ‘drop’ to share by web, email, phone, fax, and more.” From the website: http://drop.io

When I first started using drop.io, it was mainly for simple private sharing of files, mostly images and pdf documents back and forth to my students. It was a handy way for students to upload photos for class crits. They could view the images on their laptops ahead of time or during class, as I was talking about them. There were other features as well, like a phone and fax number, note making capabilities, and an email address. I never used the phone, fax number or email, but I have used the notes.

Current Features. In the year or so since my first drop, the features list has grown to include collaborative options such a live presentations, drop casting, and chat. A free account gets you 100mb of space, and all the other features of drop.io except for the custom templates. One time space upgrades may be purchased for $10 for 1GB for one year, for one drop, which is comparable to web hosting prices. Every extra GB is $10. An extra year is $10. An extra drop is $10. You get the picture. So 2 GB for 2 years and one drop is $40. How simple is that! 10 bucks. 10 bucks. 10 bucks. Sounds like a pizza commercial. The developers have the right idea. Keep it simple and cheap and more people will likely buy the extra space.

The next step up is the Manager account. Plans start at 10 GB for 20 drops @ $19 per month, or 30GB for 50 drops @ $49 per month. So that’s $228-$588 to build an enterprise-wide system that will fit even the most frugal organization. Unless you are storing a huge image library, these plans should do well as a starting point. Need even more space and more drops? Contact the drop team to set up a custom business plan for your particular needs.

“Manager is a simple to use tool that provides central management, custom branding, tracking, optional encryption, and more. Ideal for academics, professionals, and businesses alike.”

So, what can you do with drop.io?

• secure and private file exchange and storage space that cannot be indexed by web crawlers
• all types of files can be uploaded, viewed and exchanged by logged in users (images, videos, audio, text documents, pdfs)
• in addition to files, you can drop notes and links
• you can start a dialogue of comments on each individual item that is dropped
• much simpler to use than ftp, but with the same end result of getting files from one person to another (how many times have you been frustrated by tricky ftp transfers?)
• view the drop content in several different ways, include blog view, Cooliris (turns your browser into a cinema for file viewing), media type, file system view (which shows thumbnails and information about all the content and has internal sorting categories), and a page view (which allows you to hyperlink the content)
• use the drop as a chat room with other people who are logged in
• have presentations within the drop and have access to the content while this is happening
• use the drop’s phone number to get voice mail – in fact you can even print business cards with all your drop.io contact info
• you can also conference call using drop
• fax to the drop – a specific fax cover sheet is provided
• subscribe to the drop via email, and get notifications when the drop is modified
• subscribe via RSS, Twitter, SMS, Facebook, and ping
• dropcast – download via iTunes and play back the drop
• customize the look of your drop by adding your logo and a map to your drop
• administrator privileges, to secure things like deletion of material
• Paywall the pay per use, or subscription based selling system for selling online content or access to higher value content

When you want to Add content to your drop, this is what you get

Ease of use. As the name says – Simple, Private, Sharing. Dropping files is as easy hitting the ADD button, browsing to your hard drive location and hitting DROP IT button. Most of the other features are intuitive, especially to web savvy users. Drop.io does not require you load any software, or hardware. There is no IT department involved, no waiting for setups or ordering software through supply chain management departments.

The live chat is simple to access and it allows you to change your number to your real name easily.

The presentation feature, currently in beta mode, seemed daunting at first, but once I read the tutorial and gave it a shot by logging in on a second computer, I was able to appreciate the capabilities. There is no live web audio,  but you can use the conference call phone number to have 2-way conversations with your group, or you can use the chat feature during  your presentation. Many webinars use conference calling, or you can get one-way audio out to the group. Perhaps in the future the developers will add web audio or video conferencing, where the presenter would be heard and/or seen. That would make it truly like being in a classroom. That feature would work well for teaching photography, because often you need to show students something as you are explaining it, and not everything in photography can be explained using preformatted text or videos, because you never know the questions people might ask. Having just finished an online live classroom experience using Elluminate, the drop.io presentation features seemed very basic. A good place to start though. I expect that if this beta version is well received, you may see added features in the near future.

If you are stuck they have a plethora very fast-paced “help” videos. It wouldn’t hurt to run through a few of them before you begin dropping in earnest. For all up to date information and new features check the drop.io blog.

How To

Want to see drop.io in action for yourself? Here is a drop you can play with: http://drop.io/saitsample The password is: saitsample. Please respect the drop and other readers of this piece, and don’t add any inappropriate content. (I get an email every time the drop is modified so I will be right behind you cleaning up the mess.) Please don’t delete any content, unless you make a mistake in your uploading. Since it’s a free drop, it only has 100MB of space, so keep your file size reasonable. If things get out of hand I will change the Add/Delete settings of the drop and make it a view only. How boring is that?

Go to http://drop.io and start today. Before you start, think of a drop.io name. Your drop will end up looking like this: http://drop.io/yourdropname. If you don’t think of a name you will get some strange looking url like http://drop.io/jhditrk. No too easy to remember! You should also come up with an Admin password. It’s that simple. In just two clicks you have created a drop.

Applications for Teaching

I am a contract photography instructor at SAIT, and I do corporate and personal training in the private sector. I am also very self-reliant. The fact that I can set up this integrated sharing system without myself, my students or my clients buying any software or pestering any IT people is very appealing to me. Drop.io is easy use, very practical, and easily scalable if I ever need more drops or more space.

I have already used drop.io in a classroom setting and have written a bit about it before.

• I use a drop as a critique space for my photography classes
• It’s private, so it gives the students a safe space to experiment with new imaging techniques
• It also allows myself and the other students to add comments to each photo individually
• Students can preview the images before the class starts, and be ready with comments
• I also use the drop to upload pdf files, sample photos and other notes.
• Using drop is easier than emailing all the students, because I know they’ll be accessing the drop to upload their weekly photo, plus I make it their responsibility to look there for notes
• As the administrator of the drop, I disallow file deletion by my students
• This protects their files, as well as my teaching notes and things from accidentally being trashed

Students loved using drop.io for their critiques. There was no printing to do, no CD to burn or physically hand in, just this simple way of submitting the assignment and seeing what their classmates did at the same time. Plus, students tended to offer more constructive criticism with their comments when they could write them anonymously, as opposed to saying them out loud in class. The only limiting thing about using drop.io was the slow Internet speed at the college I was teaching at. It frustrated the students and also caused problems when playing back the images in front of the class.

Another application to teaching is to use drop.io as a discussion forum using the Presentation feature. You could upload a presentation, article or even pose discussion questions, and then have the students post their comments online using the chat. Again, because of the private nature of drop.io, it would be like having a discussion on WebCT, where only the class members would see the content. Really, you could post a whole course online using drop.io. The only thing is that all registered users would see all the content. You could set up drops for each student if you had the need, but then you would lose the “group” atmosphere of the online classroom.

For distant education, or working in a blended learning environment, with some face to face time mixed with some online sessions, being able to do online presentations is also a great feature, but as mentioned previously, in it’s current form it has limits. For the photo critiquing scenario above, the presentation feature would work if the students were all at their computer and able to get online. Students could leave their comments in the chat area, and they could even remain anonymous. The class would have to agree to meet in the drop at the same time. For group work, you as teacher could even set up a separate drop for each group. Drop.io would never replace a system like WebCT, but for those courses that don’t need all the features of WebCT, it could work.

When learning photography, students are always looking for feedback. Even in a non-credit class, my students crave some sort of benchmark or standard to strive for in their work. They don’t want to be embarrassed in the final class crit when they have to show their images publicly. In the beginning of the process, when they are learning all about exposure and camera set up, it may be the technical values they are concerned about. Over time they will want to discuss the artistic and emotional values of their images as well. Typically, though they understand the emotional values first. What makes them ooh and aah, or go yuk when they see a photo. It’s the gut reaction to a cute baby, puppy, or the horror of a mangled body at an accident scene. Artistically, they may comment on the composition and lighting. Many times after class, students will come up to me and show me the shots they’ve taken the past week on the back of their camera. They want to know how they’re doing.

In the corporate seminar environment, using drop.io also works well for following-up with students, as these can be rather hurried events. After the seminar, students could upload photos or questions about the seminar or their photos. A similar scenario could be used in FaceBook or Flickr, but it’s easier to contain using drop.io. Plus the course content, presentations, and sample photos could be stored securely in the drop. Similarly if I was doing a public speaking engagement, I could set up a paywall drop with more content and a chance for some feedback on people’s images.

I could even have the technical presentations and reading material online, and then organize a field trip for the locals. I could set up a tour and visit several towns in a region. The application possibilities are numerous. Keep dreaming.

Using the paywall feature, is a great way to monetize my teaching skills to the masses. I can put great content on a drop, and give people a price and a time frame to use it in. It wouldn’t have to be much. In keeping with the spirit of drop.io, maybe $10 per student, per module, per month. Extra student, $10. Extra modules, $10.  Extra month, $10. Online software educators such as Lynda.com work on a subscription basis, so it wouldn’t be far off the norm.

Evaluation of Effectiveness

Since there is no way to automatically track participation using drop.io like there is for online instructional technology software, instructors will need to rely on feedback from the students and more manual methods. You can monitor how many images students are uploading to your drop, if they leave their name on each file or comment. Using an id number instead of their name, would keep the photo critique comments anonymous from the other students.

There is always the standard course evaluation form. Several of my students have added hand written comments on the course evaluations, saying that the weekly critiques using the drop.io interface was the most enjoyable part of the class. An exit survey would also be fairly simple to set up.

If the student’s photography improves, they get more engaged, are happy and enthusiastic in class, enroll in more courses, or even if own their visual literacy increases, these could be considered a way to evaluate the success of utilizing drop.io in their course.

Any Problems to Report?

I have recently been informed that some of the features do not work using IE 6.0 browsers. A colleague of mine was doing a drop.io demo after this post was written, and the chat feature did not work plus the windows would not close when using IE 6.0. I went on the customer support site, found someone else with similar problems, posted this problem, and got a speedy reply that this is indeed the case and it won’t be fixed. Current version of IE is 8.0.

Also, when my colleague created the drop initially, he did not set a password. If you need a password, you’ll have to pay attention during your set up. For all the details please check the drop.io FAQ or for problems check the Customer Support Community. (It would be worth checking out the whole Get Satisfaction site while you’re at it! What a great way to offer customer service!)

Conclusion

Setting up a drop takes two clicks. Uploading files is simple. Viewing images as a slide show is as easy as viewing by Media. For what I teach it works. I may try to use some of the other features like the live chat or the presentation feature, at some point, but really just the private file sharing, online storage capabilities, access from any internet connection, and the simple url and login work for me. People tend to think you can’t teach photography online, but by using drop.io, you can get a bit closer to a full online teaching environment.

Keep in mind that there could be browser compatibility issues. If you find any other problems, please post them here in the comments or drop me an email.