"Gaggle.net is more than just another Web 2.0 tool. It is a software suite for elementary and middle school students that is totally protected from potentially harmful images, suggestive text, and can be monitored by school staff for bullying and other inappropriate behavior. As Gaggle’s slogan states, “Putting student safety before everything else”.
So what makes gaggle.net so great? The software suite includes student email accounts that can be monitored, safe blogs, safe chat rooms, safe profile pages, safe message boards, and safe digital lockers. These make school to home and home to school possible without forgetting your thumb drive. It makes student collaboration and communications easier." (Gaggle, 2009)
“Gaggle’s new Velocity interface is based on the AJAX (Adobe) framework, giving the appearance similar to Microsoft Outlook, but it is inside a web page. Bother teachers and students can use Gaggle’s web-based interface and get the same productivity they would find in regular POP3 email clients. With Velocity, messages and folders load almost instantly, with significantly faster response time than traditional web based email.” (Gaggle, 2009)
"The Gaggle digital lockers allow students to save documents online for use at home and at school. The locker feature allows teachers to share files with students. The locker allows students to collaborate with fellow students and facilitates group projects much like the ones online courses require at higher levels of education. Bottom line, the digital locker prevents viruses, and other malware, from ever having a chance to enter a school system because each document is scanned online before it leaves the digital locker. In addition, Gaggle is CIPA compliant." (Gaggle, 2009)
"The message boards allow for careful and effective differentiated instruction and can also motivate students who do not like to write with pen and paper. The message boards promote collaboration because they are teacher monitored.
Finally, the biggest feature to sell this website to a community is Parent Accounts. Parents can read their children’s email, help facilitate parent-teacher communication and aid in the restrictions established by the school and district.
Each student is allowed 100 megabytes of storage so even large presentation files can be accessed at school and home without purchasing external drives. Gaggle uses a Web 2.0 interface, has attachment filtering and can translate to other languages." (Gaggle, 2009)
I am recommending this to school districts that require higher levels of student security while allowing each student to learn about Web 2.0 and utilize the educational value and productivity.
Finally! A tool for schools that's like Google but puts a gag on some things that Google allows through. I plan on researching this more and recommending it to my administration. I'm hoping to see my school move into the 21st century for technology (teachers are still using overhead projectors and writing on transparencies). Gaggle would be an excellent step in the right direction.
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