New Copy Features Added to LiveBinders

In response to several requests, we have added the following features to LiveBinders:

1. No Copy Option – You now have a choice as to whether your public binders can be copied. By default, all binders can be copied.  To change your public binder to disable copy, go to  Edit Menu > Properties > Access and choose “Public – Copy Disabled”
   
2. Copy from Within a Binder – Now you can create a copy of a binder from within the binder you are viewing.  To copy, make sure you are logged in, then click on the ‘copy’ link located above the binder tabs next to comments.
   
3. Embed from Within a Binder – You can now get the embed code for a binder from within that binder by clicking on the “E” icon next to the Facebook and Twitter icons at the bottom of the binder page.
   

Thank you to the LiveBinders users who reported bugs and requested features.  Please continue to let us know how to make LiveBinders better for you by sending email to feedback@livebinders.com.

10 Great Ways that Educators are Using LiveBinders

It is so much fun to go to the LiveBinders site and see all the new ways that educators are using LiveBinders.  Everyday that I go to the site I see a new interesting binder,  so I thought it would be great to highlight some of examples in this post:

1. ePortfolios – I think Jackie Gerstein created one of the first ePortfolios on LiveBinders and it is still one of the best:
   
   Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D.
2. Computer Lab – Are you always finding more sites that you want to share in the computer lab?  If you keep them in a LiveBinder, the students always have access to your latest finds, like this one created by user ‘dboyd’:
   
   Student Internet Sites
3. Administration – Sometimes there is an event at school (like state testing) where the information changes constantly and things need to be posted in one place so that everyone has everything they need to know in one place. This binder from user ‘mstoraasli’ is a great example:
   
   PLAN Testing Info 2009
4. Library – This is a great Library Media Center binder from ‘joquetta’ who has clearly done an excellent job organizing all this information:
   
   Library Media Center Milford Mill Academy
5. Student Assignments – One class grouped all of their drawings together for an interesting puzzle cube assignment into LiveBinders:
   
   Brandon’s Puzzle Cube
6. Collecting things to read -  How do you organize all those great links from tweets so that you can find them later when you need them?  Mary Johnson organized her reading material in this LiveBinder and was kind enough to make it public so that the rest of us can read these great articles, too:
   
   Professional Reading
7. Preparing for lessons – ‘xmath’ put together this great binder for teaching kids about upcoming Veteran’s Day:
   
   Veterans Day Resources
8. Posting course materials - This binder on the “Introduction to Internet” from user ‘peterclearly’ organizes all the course materials neatly into tabs and subtabs:
   
   Introduction to Internet LF2547
9. Sharing resources - A group of 25 teachers were all collecting separate links.  By using the same account, they combined all their links into one binder, so they could quickly gain access to all the latest sites.
   
   Social Media and Web 2.0 Web Sites
10. Best resources on a subject – Teresa McGee’s ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ binder, Colleen Young’s ‘Wordle – educational uses’ Binder, and Sheeler’s Edgar Allan ‘Poe’ binder are all excellent examples of collecting the best resources on a subject:
    
    Leonardo da Vinci
    
    Wordle – educational uses
    
    Poe
11. Fun – Ok, I know I was going to stop at 10, but who says binders are all work and no play? I loved Nancy Devine’s collection of ‘Pumpkin Recipes’:
    
    Pumpkin recipes

Import Delicious Bookmarks into LiveBinders

Now you can import delicious bookmarks directly into a LiveBinder. Here is how you do it.

We also made a couple other changes to LiveBinders:

1. Binders will now default to private.  When you create a new binder, the default setting will be private, but you can change it at the time you create it or any time later.
2. ‘LiveBinder It’ testing.  Some urls don’t like to sit in the binder (like Twitter) so we have to insert them as links.  We now test for this when you are using ‘LiveBinder It’ from your browser.  This test takes 10 seconds, but is necessary to build the binder correctly.

Thanks to everyone who helped us find issues and bugs.  You are helping us make every release of LiveBinders better than the last.

Have you seen these great binders on Internet safety that thebyrditlady created?  These might be good to share with your students:

Internet Safety

FACEBOOK PRIVACY

A Library of LiveBinders for Teachers

Educators have been creating some great LiveBinders that are excellent resources for other educators. We thought we would pull them together in this wiki as a Library of LiveBinders organized by subject and grade level. We would love to hear your input on other ways to organize these great binders.

Please take a look at this wiki and let us know your thoughts.

Also, here are some tips and tricks for those of you who are building LiveBinders to share with others:

LiveBinders Tips and Tricks

My Favorite Thing – Finding Something Instantly

When someone just tweeted that they needed a source for free powerpoint templates and backgrounds, it took me just seconds to find the template site that I have used in the past – even though it has been over year since I used it.  I knew it was in my presentation binder:

Product Presentations

That is my favorite thing about LiveBinders – knowing exactly where to find everything. Even though I have over 250 binders and thousands of links and documents, I still know exactly where to find things.

But I’m interested in what other people think. Tina recently interviewed a teacher who liked LiveBinders because she could take her binders with her if she changed schools. All the materials that she had collected were hers to share and reuse as she pleased.

What is your favorite thing about LiveBinders?

We would also like to know what can we do to make LiveBinders work better for you. We are always incorporating your feedback into LiveBinders. How we can make the product better for you? Post here or send an email to feedback@livebinders.com.

Easy Search by Author Added to LiveBinders

We just put up a new release of LiveBinders. This has fixes for bugs reported by Peter and Andrew including some sites that wouldn’t work with “LiveBinder It” and some IE8 issues. Thank you to both of you for reporting the problems to us!

A new feature added in this release is the ability to click on the author name to do a “search by author”. This lets you click on the author’s name of the binder on the “Featured Binders” shelf and see all the binders by that author. For example, you could click on “xmath” on the binder below to see what other great binders he has created:

More Features for Teachers

Live Link

We had several teachers who requested the ability to open the web page from within the binder – essentially escape the confines of the binder. So now, in play or full screen mode, the link in the binder is a live link. Clicking on that link will take you out of the binder and to that web page.

Live Link in the Binder

Change Email Address

We also had requests to be able to change your email address. You can now do that. To change any information in your profile, just click on the link with your user name in the upper right corner of the LiveBinders page.

Link to Profile

Formatting Clean Up

We also did some formatting clean up. We noticed that teachers were creating some amazingly comprehensive binders with many subtabs like this one:

Teaching Resources

So we just made that look a little better.

Please keep those requests coming! We are thrilled with the response from teachers and want to make sure that LiveBinders works well for you.

Student Goals

Mr. Lester has been busy figuring out new ways to use binders in his teaching. He recently came up with the idea of using private binders for student-parent-teacher communication. A private binder can have the student’s individual goals in a place where everyone can find them. The binder can have websites and materials designed to help that student reach their goals.

We can’t show you examples of these binders because they are private. But here some more of Mr. Lester’s well-organized public binders:

Mr. Lester- 2nd Grade Resources

Mr. Lester- 4th Grade Resources

Mr. Lester- 5th Grade Resources

Binder Dashboard Added

We just added a new dashboard feature to LiveBinders so that you can track the activity on your binders and see when you have new comments.

Also with this release we are still working on the file upload problem. Our apologies for not having this completely working yet. Right now you can upload word documents, but they will open outside of the binder. Uploading pdfs still is not yet working.

We fixed a problem with ‘LiveBinder It’. ‘LiveBinder It’ our bookmarklet, was not working properly when there were special characters in the title of a webpage – so you may have seen some web pages that wouldn’t go into the binder. That is now fixed.

Thank you everyone for your continued feedback!

Creative Teaching with LiveBinders

Mr. Lester has made some great binders. If you haven’t seen them, some are included below. But he has also thought of other ideas for using LiveBinders to help his students. Here are some of Mr. Lester’s ideas:

1. Bookmarking – I am using livebinders now as a tool to give parents websites that they can use to help further their child’s education at home. I am hoping to add other binders with different content presentations to allow a child to view content explained in a different way then their classroom teacher.
2. Blog/Review - Using the Text/Web layout students and teachers can blog about current websites that a viewer can see next to their thoughts.
3. Personal Journal - The livebinders can be a great spot to upload thoughts in a tab/subtab system.
4. Student Response Journals – Using the text to text layout a student can go over chapters of a story and place key information and questions.
5. Portfolio - Students can collect their work and have a digital portfolio using all layouts in a livebinder.
6. E-learning – Students can have homework assignments based on web research that the teacher provides in a text to web layout. The teacher can have a worksheet printout available in the subtab.

Thank you for sharing your great ideas Mr. Lester!

Here are just a few of Mr. Lester’s great binders. You can find more on our site by using the search box at the top and searching by Author for “Mr.Lester”.

Mr.Lester- 3rd Grade Resources

Mr. Lester- Kindergarten Resources

Mr. Lester- 1st Grade Resources