Wow!!!!!!!. This is really really cool. I just want to get my hands on Zoho Notebook…

Raju you are rocking.

I have played around with zoho and agree it is really cool and that it opens up tremendous opportunties in the classroom. I am the principal of a school and I am beginning a 1:1 pilot project for my 6th grade students. I would love to just use zoho or even google docs. However I am faced with two obstacles - #1. my tech department has things locked down so much that we cannot even access google email #2. many of my students do not have internet access at home or if they do it is dialup. What happens at home when they cannot access zoho?

One way or another we have to address the access issue. Learning does not happen within the walls of the school between the hours of 8-3. Plus we need to stop drinking the MS cool-aide and realize there are other options out there.

Thanks for the zoho post.

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[...] Will Richardson today points us to this video: [...]

Thanks for the post Will.

We want to offer some built-in templates for Notebook for education. While I might be able to pull off some templates, the heart will be missing if it lacks workflow. Will you be able to spend few minutes on how you see this useful in education and probably give me a work flow? This way, I have it in my roadmap?

You have my contact info

This looks great. Other than the price, what would be the advantages over something like MS OneNote? How is the ink Support? We’ve been using OneNote for a couple of years with our 1:1 tablet program and have been very happy with the ink features as well as the “shared session” feature. I’ve used shared One Note sessions for collaborative brainstorming in my English class.

Next year, we will probably begin migrating to Blackboard Backpack (made by agilix) to integrate with our Blackboard Course Management system.

[...] Here’s a great Zoho Notebook demo (via Will). [...]

Zoho does look very tempting… I would jump on it if I wasn’t already using Google for everything (one password to rule them all)

Yeah, this goes way beyond Google docs. I’d like to see this in action in an educational setting some time.

I love all of the Zoho products and would like to introduce them to my students, however Zoho’s site is under COPA constraints. Any suggestion on how to get around this for upper elementary students?

Zoho BETA. With the licensing terms, they can turn it on for a cost AT ANY TIME, or remove your access at their discretion.
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Subscription to Beta Service

AdventNet may offer certain services as closed or open beta services (the “Beta Service”) for the purpose of testing and evaluation. AdventNet shall have the sole authority and discretion to determine the period of time for testing and evaluation of the Beta Service. AdventNet shall be the sole judge of the success of such testing and the decision, if any, to offer any of the Beta Service as a commercial service. You will be under no obligation to acquire a subscription to use any commercial service as a result of your subscription to the Beta Service. AdventNet reserves the right to modify or discontinue, at any time and from time to time, temporarily or permanently, the Beta Service (or any part thereof) with or without notice. You agree that AdventNet shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any harm related to, arising out of, or caused by the modification, suspension or discontinuance of the Beta Service for any reason.

Modification of Terms of Service

AdventNet may modify these Terms of Service upon notice to you at any time. These modifications may include, without limitation, payment for the Services. You will be provided notice of any such modification by electronic mail or by publishing the changes on the website http://zoho.com/terms.html. In the event AdventNet modifies these Terms of Service, you may terminate your use of any or all of the Services. Your continued use of the Service after notice of any change to the Terms of Service will be deemed to be your agreement to the amended Terms of Service.
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So, when they have their testing done, and are ready to go to market, what happens then?

Such testing used to happen with full knowledge that we were beta testing and not using a released product.

Should we be committing school resources, including our time and student instruction time, to beta testing situations - without question?

Zoho : la suite d’outils 2.0 [vidéo]…

Je n’avais pas jeté un coup d’oeil à Zoho depuis un bon moment. Mais voilà que Will Richardson, qui en a vu d’autres, vante le nouveau Zoho Notebook, une application gratuite en ligne qui permet de créer et de collaborer……

Thanks for the headsup on Zoho, Will.

I agree that the concept of “notebook” software applications and specifically the “sharing” of “notebooks” are hot and going to get hotter. There is a product in the Mac environment - NoteShare- that does not yet work in the Window environment and then MS-OneNote I do not believe works on the Mac yet. MS market plan appears to be moving toward on-line versions with their MS Office Live.

Zoho is another player in this field one one that is exclusively an on-line app. It’s rival at this point is probably Google. It will be interesting to see who emerges as the leader in a few years.

One of the big drawbacks of all of the on-line versions is the issue of connectivity and throughput. In looking at the forum on Zoho I notices some complaints about “slowness.”

And having just returned from a road trip where I was in six hotels in eight days, I can tell you that finding consistent and robust connectivity is still a bit of a crapshoot. Please don’t tell me to get one of those wireless plugins for my laptop that connects with a cellphone tower. We have very limited access here in Maine.

I know my colleagues in schools also struggle with connectivity issues, so I am not sure the on-line versions of these packages are quite ready to go mainstream.

This will be interesting!

~j