How do I use Posterous for education?
When choosing any sharing platform educators need something both powerful and flexible yet easy to use from the educator down to the student level.
Why does Posterous shine in an education setting? Here are a few reasons:
- It's simple - Stay in touch beyond the classroom. In just minutes, create a Site or Group to begin sharing assignments, student work, news, and even meaningful discussions.
- Easily publish class materials and multimedia - Make learning fun by posting homework, podcasts, slides, and photos. Just upload. Posterous makes it look good and takes out the hassle of dealing with any 3rd party webhosts.
- Keep content and conversations private - Share class updates and exchange ideas in a secure setting. Control who can view and who can post with easy to manage privacy controls.
- Contribute as a team - Don’t do it alone! Invite others to publish and subscribe. Set access controls for Contributors and Administrators. Easily manage recipient lists.
- Access Posterous anywhere - With our mobile apps and approach to e-mail everyone from time-pressed parents, teachers, and students can catch up on posts and activity.
In this How Do I tutorial we'll be going over some uses of Posterous that are already being used by educators and students.
Teachers and Professors
It's common for educators to have a public website for students and parents to visit. Class activities are usually shared on a website that both students and parents can find information and even contribute to.
In his screencast, Wesley Fryer shares how easy it is to create a moderated class blog on Posterous. To create a moderated class blog, all you need to do is create a new site and set your settings to be able to moderate submissions and comments.
Anyone can post to your site. For this site, students and parents would just need to e-mail 7thgradeblogging@posterous.com with their posts. The admin, or the teacher, can then approve each comment and submission individually.
Posterous is smart - try e-mailing us any type of multimedia. We also do neat things like automatically embedding YouTube links and automatically resizing any images without the need of any 3rd party hosting providers. If you want to learn more about posting via e-mail click here.
The benefits of using Posterous as your public class blog include:
- Set up your site in minutes and add pages for additional static information.
- Add student and teacher e-mails as subscribers so they receive any new post you publish.
- Adding multimedia through the web, mobile app, or e-mail is simple and easy to frequently post.
Students
Setting up an online, professional portfolio or blog is easy. Simply sign up for a public site and choose from the dozens of professional themes to make your site stand out. Uploading media is done right from the mobile app, the web editor, or e-mail.
Uploading multiple images automatically creates a gallery so you don't need to fiddle with any code or plug-ins.
Administrative Services and Student Organizations
Posterous is more than just a blog - it can also act as its own freestanding website. The DePaul Career Center is a great example of what you can accomplish using Posteorus' easy to set-up interface. Keep your organization looking good and keep your subscribers informed of any new updates.
Events
Posterous Events is a great sharing tool to use for events. Seth O'Dell of Higher Ed Live talks about how crowdsourcing photos with camera phones and Posterous is as simple as e-mailing your photos.
You can also create a collaborative photo album as explained here.
Need some additional inspiration for using Posterous in an educational setting? Check out these Posterous sites:
If you are currently using Posterous for education, let us know! Also, check out our Posterous for Education FAQ page for all the reasons why Posterous is great in an education setting!
