Last year, Tech & Learning followed the experience of Trenton’s Village Charter School as they tested Pearson’s Successmaker and Dell’s desktops. This year, David Andrade tests Lightspeed’s My Big Campus. Read more about his experience each month at techlearning.com.
My Big Campus, from Lightspeed Systems, is an online service that allows schools to create an engaging, collaborative, online environment. The standalone version of My Big Campus is free and chock-full of some great features. You can also purchase My Big Campus with a Collaborative Web Filter.
Inviting people to join My Big Campus is easy. You can invite your colleagues or students via email or generate a link with code for them to use. This makes it easier to add your students to My Big Campus. You can also enter each student manually, creating an account for him or her.
Another feature I like is the Quick Link feature. This allows you to create quick links to any page on the site and easily access them from the top menu bar. You can also integrate your Twitter account with My Big Campus.
There is also an icon for quick access to your notifications, which can be set up to be sent to your e-mail address or as an SMS message. Notifications include anytime someone posts or comments on your wall, sends you a message, or gives you a quiz or assignment. This makes it easy to keep up with student comments or questions. It also means that students will be notified of assignments or comments so that they don’t miss them.
My Big Campus is turning out to be a very useful and powerful tool. I’ll be exploring more features each month at techlearning.com.
David Andrade is a Physics Teacher and Educational Technology Specialist in Connecticut.
