Zoho Suite of Free Technology Tools
As a freelance technical trainer my priority is to look as professional as possible while saving as much money as I can in the process. With this in mind, I discovered an entire suite of free products that can help with education.
Zoho is an online service that allows you do almost anything online that you can do with the Microsoft Office Suite —from creating documents to managing your schedule to setting up presentations – plus collaboration, project-management, chatting, and a numerous other tasks.
This suite of online web applications effectively increases your productivity and offers effortless communication with students or colleagues. The projects you create can be shared with the public, or anyone you authorize. You can make your project completely public, either via a URL on Zoho’s site or on your blog.
The biggest advantage of Zoho is that all these basic products are free. (Many of them have an affordable upgrade option offering more features.). Another benefit is that Zoho is looks professional and can even be customized with your logo and institution information.
Here are a few of the Zoho applications that I have found most beneficial for teaching:
Zoho Meeting
Zoho Meeting captures some of the important features of WebEx – desktop sharing. It enables the students to have access to the teacher’s desktop so they are able to view presentations and follow direction during classes.
Each student can view the teacher’s desktop, chat, add participants, email, and view meeting details. Sessions can also be recorded and downloaded by users. If you want to display something remotely, Zoho Meeting can help you accomplish this task.
Zoho Discussion
With Zoho Discussion you can create public or private support forums where students can share comments around a particular discussion topic (much like the discussion area in Blackboard).
Zoho provides easy set up and is filled with useful features. Similar to any forum, Zoho Discussion lets users create threads based on a particular topic. Users can create a profile, follow other users, bookmark particular threads and send private messages to the teachers and other students.
Zoho Challenge
This is application allows an instructor to create online tests. The teacher can easily add students, check on performance and verify who has passed and who has not. The student can schedule their test far in advance, view clearly accessible test results, and view graphs displaying the overall results of tests.
Zoho Wiki
Zoho Wiki provides easy to use WYSIWYG editing. The Wiki is the perfect way to create a virtual classroom so students can stay connected.
The instructor can post assignments and study materials; keep up online schedules with assignment deadlines; host pictures, slide shows, photo galleries and video clips; share articles, videos, useful links, blogs and so much more.
Zoho Chat
With Zoho Chat the user has the ability to connect with others in real time. Nearly every Zoho application has the chat function or it can be used as a standalone. The user can send files, record chat history, customize themes, and anything else you would find in an IM application.
Zoho Show
Zoho Show is a program, similar to MS PowerPoint, for creating presentations. It is simple and user-friendly. The user can upload PowerPoint files up to 10MB from your PC or the web and export Zoho presentation into PowerPoint; share the presentation remotely through Zoho Meeting; embed into other webpages; and imbed YouTube videos into their presentation. There are multiple ways to share presentations.
For information on all Zoho programs:
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoho_Office_Suite#Zoho_Wiki
To access the programs:
Zoho http://www.zoho.com/
Tags: Business, computers, free, office, technology, tools, training, zoho
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