Class communication

We have a closed Facebook group for our class. 27 out of 29 are on it. Don't really care for facebook, but the closed group is an easy way to communicate to all classmates without outside eyes seeing our posts.

I use DropBox for things like this. It's free to a certain (really large) amount of storage, and anyone with the password can access all files uploaded into it. You don't even need everyone to have it-- you upload a file in any format, it sends a notification to your list of recipients with a link to it, and they can go and download it. You can use the same password for all files, so you don't have to separately notify everyone that to get ABCFile the password is XYZ.

Or you can just park things there and not password them, and the notice goes out to your recipients and they can just go get the files at their leisure.

The secret and closed FB groups are great. We finally convinced a couple of people who kept saying no and they now realize what a great place to communicate it is.

You can also use wordpress to create a blog that you can set to private and only accessible to those you authorize. But creating blog entries needs a little more tech savvy than some can handle.

Google+ also has communities that can be made private with the use of the circles, but you gotta make sure everyone signs up for google+. I personally like this platform best due to its easy to set privacy settings on everything you post.

Dropbox as GrnTea mentioned is awesome. Only limitation is that you can only upload files, you can't converse.

Good luck!

Dropbox as GrnTea mentioned is awesome. Only limitation is that you can only upload files, you can't converse.

THe way you do a conversation is you have one document that functions as a blog-- people can download it, add to it, and put it back up. At the end of the semester you have the whole thing.

Yes, that's a good way around it! I love Dropbox and use it all the time for saving all my files.

WhatsApp is a good texting app that doesn't actually use your text quota (for those who don't have unlimited), so people are more accepting of it than when you ask to group text, which sounds an awful like lot group sex if you say it really fast, which is a no no.

I'd like to add another vote for a closed Facebook group. We have 96 students in my class, so it really works out well. If you have a question during normal waking hours, you're likely to get an answer within 10 minutes. You only get an average of 2 or 3 notifications a day, but some are funny memes, so it's kind of fun when you get the notification.

On the downside, you do receive ALL the notifications. The semester behind me has one of those people who feels the need to remind people about everything, everyday. They're actually losing people from the group because the one student posts about 15 times a day. My group doesn't have that problem, however.

Of course, some people don't have Facebook, although we've convinced a few non-FB users to open an account simply for our group.

I'd like to add another vote for a closed Facebook group. We have 96 students in my class so it really works out well. If you have a question during normal waking hours, you're likely to get an answer within 10 minutes. You only get an average of 2 or 3 notifications a day, but some are funny memes, so it's kind of fun when you get the notification. On the downside, you do receive ALL the notifications. The semester behind me has one of those people who feels the need to remind people about everything, everyday. They're actually losing people from the group because the one student posts about 15 times a day. My group doesn't have that problem, however. Of course, some people don't have Facebook, although we've convinced a few non-FB users to open an account simply for our group.[/quote']

You can turn notifications off, and tun off individuals as well.