It would seem that a lot of paper is wasted in a classroom environment. Especially in a classroom like mine where I teach primarily print media. Students often bring me two, three… ten copies of one design to proof! That is a lot of wasted paper, not to mention the biggest dent in my budget each year. With my classroom numbers growing and my budget shrinking I have been looking at new ways to reduce the amount of paper used and provide effective visual feedback to my students.
The Web 2.0 tool I discovered was ProofHQ. It is a wonderfully interactive document reviewing resource where designers and clients can review proofs of created work. The user can send and compare multiple proofs on one screen to compare changes and updates making it very easy to see that the changes have been made. Clients and designers (students and instructor) can make notes to documents quickly and easily providing less use of printed materials or wait time on turn around. Here is a short overview of ProofHQ's features.
Video recorded using ScreenFlow at http://www.proofhq.com/html/demos.html.
As an industry professional this could be an amazing time saver for me and my international clients. However, there is one downfall to the tool for a classroom environment and that is cost. Unfortunately, ProofHQ is not a free Web 2.0 tool and my budget allotment is more in the free range than cost. The functions of ProofHQ did give me and idea tho that might help in resolving the issues of time and wasted paper. As part of the curriculum this coming school year and my Action Research project we will be developing a classroom site and individual student portfolio sites through Google Apps. Each student has a gmail account with their Google App site as well as myself that will be used for sending pdf proofs of work in progress. Reviewing work within Acrobat I can add sticky notes for changes and update to send back to students. Although in some aspects this might be a little more time consuming to start but it does help in elevating our paper issues.
Screen shot of current client project with sticky note to show what would be provided for students.
ProofHQ. (2010). ProofHQ, demo movies. Retrieved from http://www.proofhq.com/html/demos.html
Brooke! Awesome Web 2.0 tool find. I am always looking for ways to find new ways to save paper. In fact, I was in the top 5 of my staff in using paper. My principal told me that I needed to be more "creative" in how I conserve my paper usage. This is a great tool to use to do just that. I can see that this is ideally more for the use of high school age or higher, but I am sure I can think of a couple of ways to utilize this at the elementary level. Anyways, great post on a useful Web 2.0 tool for the classroom and thanks for sharing.
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