JotterLab Puts Social Into Teacher-Student Collaboration

Using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to conduct lessons and interact with students sounds very progressive on paper but how can you tell whether they are paying attention to you? If you are a teacher facing this challenge, good news: help is at hand.

Developed by Singapore-based GSA Education Technology Group, JotterLab is a web application that aims to help educators better manage and evaluate their students’ online participation on tools that many of these youngsters are already using.

Managing director Jimmy Tan told SGE that he came up with the idea for JotterLab while working on global products and projects with Google.

JotterLab – a teacher’s new best friend?

Designed to complement Google apps, some of JotterLab’s key highlights include:

• Assignment dispatch system: Teachers can now distribute assignments and tasks to students, as well as inform them of deadlines in a database table with just one click. In addition, they’ll also know how many students are present in class after sending out the assignments.

• Workbin widget: No need to spend so much time at the photocopying machine anymore. With this feature, users can upload, share and search for files.

• Global Announcement Facility: Now students won’t be able to say that they didn’t get the memo. With this feature, announcements are sent to various user channels such as Facebook and Twitter as well as a central task center. Not only that, it allows teachers to track whether students have read them or not.

JotterLab also gives teachers a better understanding of how students learn and interact online, thanks to an in-built analytical engine.

Leveraging on social media tools within a collaborative framework

According to Jimmy, what sets JotterLab apart from the rest of its competitors is that it does not aim to replace any social media platform. Rather, it works with the existing players in the market “to give teachers a better idea of what their students are doing within a collaborative framework.”

Integrating with Google Apps.