Collaborize Classroom

 “CollaborizeClassroom” is a really neat site that’s a little like Black Board’s blog or assignment feature, but much more intuitive and it’s free.  Their platform allows students to engage in conversations, ask and answer questions, collaborate on projects, and vote on issues and ideas.  Here's how it works.

1. Create a class, give it a name and add your students.
2. Create an assignment.  You can embed a video from You Tube, attach a pdf file, or paste in photographs.  
3. You can also choose assignments from a library of topics by discipline and copy it to your class. 

Here's an assignment from the Topics Library on feudalism and here's another collaborative assignment I found on Rome in the Topic Library.  This assignment asks students to watch a video clip about Roman engineering and comment on the similarities of Roman housing to housing today. The platform allows for student comments. 

Next, the assignment asks students to choose another  achievement of the Roman Empire to research from a menu provided. They post their response and read the responses of their peers who researched different topics.  I like Collaborize because it gets kids to do something with their reading or viewing without simply answering a few multiple choice questions.