Digitally Speaking / Drop.io: One-Stop Sharing

Nowhere is this digital shift more apparent than in communication with parents. Early on, I'd send home weekly folders stuffed with completed assignments, a photocopied newsletter outlining classroom happenings, and—if I had a bunch of extra time—personal notes to each family regarding the progress of each child. When parents wanted more information, they'd call the school and leave a message with our secretary. The entire process of touching base was time-consuming; a week of phone tag typically preceded any extended conversation.

Those kinds of rudimentary communication practices don't cut it today. Because digital tools have made instant communication and access to important information easy, most parents expect to enjoy instant communication and access to important information. Parents who are used to going online for the answer to any question just aren't willing to wait a week for a response from their child's teacher. They're often frustrated if they have to wait more than a day.

Fording the Never-Ending Stream

Meeting these expectations for instant communication can be intimidating. Although I'm always willing to share what we're doing in class with parents, I get overwhelmed at times by the never-ending stream of questions in my e-mail inbox. Responding to parents can eat up most of my already limited planning period. I end up pushing aside more important tasks like giving students feedback, grading papers, or designing lessons—and that has me worried. I'm jazzed that digital tools have made communicating easier, but I need more time in my day for communication!

A tool called Drop.io helps me keep afloat. Drop.io allows you to share content on customized websites. I use Drop.io to post on one easily accessible site must-see messages to parents, a description of daily class work, and tons of resources related to class projects. Instead of composing many e-mails in response to individual parent messages and sending handouts, permission slips, resource lists, and the like home with the kids, I compose one or two brief messages a day, which I post on Drop.io. These often contain links to downloadable materials or to materials I've posted elsewhere.

For example, check out these sites, which I used in my classroom last year:

• Grizzlies Drop (http://drop.io/grizzlies): Created to keep the parents of my students posted about daily classroom happenings, the Grizzlies drop includes nothing more than messages sent from my e-mail account. Sometimes I'd send one message a week, other times, multiple messages per day. If I changed a due date on a project, I'd send a message. If there was an after-school activity that parents needed to know about, I'd send a message. If I came across an interesting website, I'd post it.
• Carbon Fighters Drop (http://drop.io/carbonfighters): Created to house all materials for a major project of my 6th grade language arts students, the Carbon Fighters drop was an incredibly valuable tool. Not only did I share links to age-appropriate research sites, I also posted digital copies of every handout students needed to complete this task. When parents wanted to help their children from home, they had access to the same tools that I used in class— and when students lost class materials, retrieving them was a click away.

How to Use Drop.io

To start sharing content with a group, just visit Drop.io's main page (www.drop.io) and enter a customized name for a new website you'd like to create. With one click, your new site is ready.

As with most free tools, there's nothing fancy about Drop.io. Users can add a picture to the sidebar and change the "skin"—or color scheme—of their site, but there aren't any other complicated choices. Viewers who stop by a Drop.io site see nothing more than a list of items that the "drop's" owner has shared. These can be sorted by type (such as links, documents, messages, updates) or date. I share the URL for my sites with all my students and their parents.

What makes Drop.io beautiful is that it allows users to post content to their sites in about a million different ways. If you're a hard-core techie, you can sign in to your drop and upload content using the "Add" button at the top of the screen. The advanced features of Drop .io enable you to create interactive chat boxes or embed content from third-party sources on your website.

And All from My In-Box

What I view as most helpful to overwhelmed teachers is that Drop.io enables a user to post content directly from an e-mail in-box. Have a quick update that you want to share with parents? Simply write an e-mail and send it to the customized address that Drop.io automatically creates for your website. Want to share a digital copy of a handout you're using in class? Add it as an attachment to a new message and hit send; your parents and students will have access to it immediately.

Although Drop.io isn't designed to facilitate private, two-way communication with parents, it has helped reduce the number of questions in my in-box simply by reducing the time it takes to share with parents. No one is confused about class projects or due dates anymore because I'm posting updates all the time.

The work I'm doing with Drop.io isn't revolutionary. I've been uploading content, from quick messages to documents, to the Internet for the better part of a decade. The difference—and it's a big one—is that Drop.io makes uploading content easier than ever. Being able to add updates from my e-mail inbox—a place that I'm comfortable with and that I spend hours poking through—makes it more likely I'll follow through on my promise to share the kind of information necessary for making parents my partners.