Livebinders for organizing

I am sure by now, many of you have heard of a Livebinder.  In fact, they have been around for awhile, but I think it is good to go back to things and look at how they are used and come up with some potential ideas.  I have to be honest, I have come across a few fantastic shelves that I have copied into my own as a time saver, which I think is a wonderful plus of Livebinders. 

Some background information for those of you unfamiliar, a Livebinder is a site where you can tag links and images into a specific binder to use in a class setting, to use as a method of organizing or to use for various chapters in your book. I use it to keep track of links my students can refer to for a paper, a project or other research.  I also have one that I keep private where I keep some of my library things I am working on, particularly my series binder and my library vision.   There are thousands of livebinders to search through, and what is awesome about them is the fact that you can save them to your own shelf for later reference.  I found the entire book I use in French 1 as a binder someone made.  It had links, videos and articles for every chapter.  Why make a new one if someone has one like it?  Collaboration at its best! 

I went to EdcampIndy back in June and one of the organizers assembled the entire day into a livebinder. It is still a work in progress, but there are a lot of opportunities using it.

Here are ways I can use it in my class:
1) Have students organize chapter by chapter links as we cover materials in class.  They can also insert videos at home for later reference.

2) Flipping a class.  You could assemble all of your links, articles and tasks for flipping a class.  Each chapter could be inserted into a binder on a shelf.

3) Book Clubs:  Have a binder for each book you are reading and assemble everything together.  (It could work for guided reading as well.) There could be links inserted to chat areas where conversations can happen.  You could even put clips of things for the books (bulletin boards, images, etc.)

4) Staff organization.  If you are a supervisor, (ie: Head librarian, administrator, etc.) Couldn't you use a livebinder to assemble a staff manual and documents staff could access.  Why print hundreds of pages and put in a paper binder, when a Livebinder is there.

5) Research projects: If your students are doing some PBL, you can assemble all of the criteria, expectations and links into a livebinder. It keeps kids in one place and not going all over the internet getting into things they ought not be getting into.

Whatever your plans, I am certain you can find something to do with Livebinders.