Threering

This is an assessment of Threering adapted and extended from a classmates post in APLING678 at UMass Boston.

Pros:

Cloud-based tool reduces risk of lost work.
It’s free! (at least for now)
It works on a variety of devices (Android, iOS, computer), increasing accessibility for students.
The site/app are very intuitive in their design with little to no learning curve.
Teachers can create student and parent accounts so that they can view the work of that specific student.
Teachers can add private notes on each submission, allowing them to document growth.
The minimalist layout makes the information very readable to pleasing to the eye.
Especially great for art classes, as students can photograph their work for documentation without keeping the physical work.
Also allows easy audio recordings, so it could be beneficial for documenting oral communicative activities (even in groups).
All work is consolidated in one place, making it easy for teacher to review a classes’ work/individual student growth
Uploading work via the mobile app is very easy, just take a picture, then click on the appropriate (class, student- teacher account) tags.

As far as I can tell, here are the ‘cons’:

The portfolios are managed by the teacher, so if a student moves away and/or the teacher deletes their account at the end of the year, the student’s portfolio ceases to exist. I am looking for an approach which allows students to keep/maintain their portfolios beyond my course, so this is probably makes it a ‘no-go’ for me. 😦
Tags are teacher-generated ahead of time, which prevents spontaneous tagging for new topics. It would be nice to have the option of adding tags while uploading work.