Penzu - An Online Diary and Personal Journal

Penzu (www.penzu.com) is an online personal journaling site.  Registered members have the ability to create online journal entries.  Users can add text, titles, images, and the journal entries are automatically dated.  Journal entries can be kept private, shared, printed and emailed.  The user has the ability to make their entire journal private or make specific journal entries private.  Only the user has the ability to edit the journal entry.  Users can download the Penzu application to their smartphones for easy use and access from wherever they are.  In an article called Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers, Nik Peachey list different ways that teachers could potentially use Penzu in an educational setting:

Create digital materials - You can create your own online materials using texts with images and share them with your students.

Writing portfolio - You can use it to set written homework task for students. These are then neatly stored and can be reviewed as a kind of writing portfolio and shared with parents or employers.

Professional development journal - You can use it as your own personal development journal to reflect on your teaching and your reading about teaching.

Lesson summary - You can also record what you did with the classes each lesson and send it to them as a summary or reminder.

Model process writing - You can use it to create models for writing activities. You could use a new entry each time you redraft to show how the text changes through the process steps of brainstorming and drafting to the finished product.

Learner diaries - You can get your students to use it as a learning journal and write in what they learned from each lesson. They could share these entries with you.

Action research feedback - You could use it for action research feedback by asking students to reflect on aspects of your teaching and then send you the response using the anonymous message feature. (Peachey)

These are just some of the ways that Penzu could be used in an educational setting but the possibilities are endless.