Famster

**Resources Links**
[|www.famster.com]

**Strengths:**
This is definitely a collaboration site. The site encourages creativity. Each student has an opportunity to create a character for themselves. Students are able to upload pictures, videos, audio, and other files for sharing. Students are able to blog on different topics posted by the teacher. There is an interactive calendar for important events, assignment due dates, tests, etc. Each student has access to a personalize e-mail account. There is a security center to manage accounts and passwords. Students are able to upload components from their mobile devices. There is a recipe feature that can be altered to include educational recipes, i.e., recipes for success, test taking strategies. There is a family tree feature that allows a venue for parents to participate on this site. The site includes a registered sexual offender page for added awareness and security.

**Weaknesses:**
$9.95 / month. The Blog pages are very basic. Students can add text, graphics, and pictures. I would have like to see more of the glog functionality, especially for $119.40 / year. The character prompts seem to be very limited. Student blog responses are not reviewed before publishing.

**Opportunities:**
This site provides a venue to create a perpetual dynamic among teachers, students, and parents. This is a great teacher resource to house information for students, parents, administrators, and alumni. This web 2.0 tool provides the framework and the infrastructure for a learning community.

**Threats:**
This is a restricted site, by invitation only. However, personal information, pictures, videos, blogs, may be seen by anyone if not made private.

**Ideas for the Classroom:**
This web 2.0 tool can be used in many ways. In an effort to further develop meaning for concepts, the blog page can be developed to address essential questions. Practice and Lecture videos can be uploaded to further provide instruction and review for topics. Parents can respond to blog pages, calendar events, and other classroom information posted on the site. Students digital portfolios can be uploaded for review and assessment. For Language Arts and Reading the students could have a reading book club and discuss on the blog about the book and create questions for others to answer. For writing the students could share their writing samples on the blog and then the students could provide feedback to one another.