Have you discovered MrOwl? It’s a free, new tech tool you can use to create a personalized Internet experience based on the topics that are important to you. You can easily build, organize, and customize topic “branches” that you share with friends and family. It’s completely free of advertising, too. These features make MrOwl the perfect tool for educators who can use it in the classroom with students and on their own for organizing lesson resources. You can even use MrOwl to create a free class website!
Using the MrOwl Chrome extension, you can easily save your favorite website links so you know where to find them later. Furthermore, you can upload your own documents and photos to your branches, making it easy to create comprehensive collections of searchable information.
The best part is that MrOwl gets wiser as more people use it. The branches that you build help to shape the MrOwl community “tree,” an ever-growing, searchable collection of web links and resources. These branches are curated by real people in the MrOwl community, not a computer, so they’re free of inappropriate content and organized in a way that makes sense. MrOwl is free of advertising, too, so you aren’t distracted by annoying pop-ups or sidebar ads.
But MrOwl is more than a safe search engine or a handy bookmarking tool; it’s also a unique social media platform that makes it easy to interact with others who share your interests. MrOwl community members can follow other users, message their own followers, and even invite people to collaborate with them on their branches. It truly couldn’t be any simpler! Members can also grab, “heart,” and share branches created by others.
To help teachers get started with MrOwl, I developed a webinar called Discover MrOwl: A Free Tech Tool for Organizing, Sharing, and Collaborating. The live presentation is over, but you can still watch the replay here. MrOwl is brand new, so if you like exploring new tech tools, you’ll love this webinar! MrOwl is a really powerful tool with a lot of cool features for teachers and even more on the way. During the webinar, I explained how to get started setting up a profile, creating topic branches, organizing your content, and collaborating with others. I even explained how to use it to set up a free class website. When you watch the replay, you’ll meet Becky and Arvind Raichur, the founders of MrOwl, too!
To start exploring MrOwl on your own so you can see how it works, click over to my profile page, @laura_candler, and check out some of the branches I’ve created. If the page you see doesn’t look exactly like the one below, it’s probably because you’re not logged in. It’s easy to create a free account, but be sure to choose a user name that you don’t mind being public and visible to others. I recommend using your real name if it’s available, which is why I signed up with @laura_candler. After you log in, return to my profile page and follow me! Then grab branches you like to save them for later and explore MrOwl to find new interests and get inspired!
MrOwl is the brainchild of Becky and Arvind Raichur, and their vision dates back almost 20 years to 1999, a time before Google and Pinterest when it was nearly impossible to search the web. Becky and Arvind envisioned making the Internet a better experience for everyone, where it’s easy to organize and curate collections of searchable links, documents and more in one convenient place. Their ultimate goal was to create a connected community curated by real people like you, not a computer. The word “crowdsourcing” wasn’t coined until 2005, but the concept describes their early vision perfectly!
It wasn’t until 2013 that they were able to put together a team to bring MrOwl to life, and it’s taken the team several years to build and test the site. During that time, they’ve added new features that make MrOwl more interactive and easier to personalize. MrOwl began as a web-based platform, but a convenient mobile app was just released so that you can access MrOwl right from your phone or tablet.
Now that MrOwl is available to the public, Becky and Arvind are eager to spread the word so that others can benefit from this free tool. They’re especially excited about MrOwl’s potential for classroom use, which is why they reached out to me. They initially just asked me to review the site and offer feedback about how to make it even more useful for teachers. After I spent time on MrOwl, I realized that it’s far more powerful than it appears at first glance, and I knew that I had to share it with others! I was also impressed with Becky and Arvind’s sincere desire to make MrOwl even more useful for teachers and more appropriate for students. They’ve already started working on some new features, such as templates teachers can use to create free class websites, and they’re open to your feedback and suggestions as well.
I’ve also created a Facebook group called MrOwl Educators where teachers can learn about new features and get early access to them. Group members can also ask questions and share their ideas for using MrOwl in the classroom. A third function of the Facebook group will be to seek feedback about how to make MrOwl even better for educators, and this information will be shared with Becky and Arvind. If you’d like to join the MrOwl Educators Facebook group, fill out this Google Doc form and follow the directions on that page to request access.
