Letterpop+page

**Warning** : LetterPOP no longer offers a free option. However, it does offer a specialized version for teachers at a CRAZY discounted rate! A teacher pays about $40 for a year's subscription that includes the premium level of options. Keep reading if that hasn't scared you away...
 * Josh and Eugene**

LetterPOP is an online tool for creating, publishing, and archiving newsletters. The site provides a step-by-step process and "no brainer" templates with nice images, backgrounds, and color schemes. If newsletters is not your thing, the home page suggests plenty of other uses for the tool, including digital catalogues, greeting cards, presentations, invitations, and photo collages.
 * What is LetterPOP?**
 * Here is LetterPOP's "How It Works" page**
 * Here is LetterPOP's "Examples" page**

The LetterPOP website is very easy to use. Everything you need to know and do is laid out in steps that easy to follow. Especially after publishing one or two newsletters on your own, the process would be second nature. This tool requires very little time and effort to publish great-looking publications. (We found ourselves saying: "It's impossible to get lost on this website.")
 * Good things about LetterPOP**

LetterPOP's email function allows you to publish flashy, neatly-formatted newsletters for your students and their families, and disperse them instantly via email (and with no paper or copies!). Anyone that sends a regular newsletter could use this tool to update their look, and then automatically email up to 5,000 students, parents, guardians, coaches, family friends, teachers, administrators, club members, boosters... and so on.

LetterPOP has a multi-page function that could basically serve as a web-based presentation software, such as MS PowerPoint, SMART Notebook, or Prezi. Especially if you are frustrated with the "start from scratch" format for other presentation programs, LetterPOP's templates can provide you all the structure you could ever want, and more! The email function could allow you to send the information directly to one or all of your students, or to publish the link on your Blackboard course site.

LetterPOP requires you to use one of their pre-loaded templates. While there are TONS to choose from, and many with excellent graphics, they are unchangeable. If you are used to manipulating other tools to better meet your needs, LetterPOP won't have any of that! And you can only choose one graphic theme per "newsletter," which could be pretty restricting, depending on your needs.
 * Bad things about LetterPOP**

LetterPOP claims on their home page that the blog feature provides help, support, new tools, and resources, but this blog hasn't been updated since January of this year.

Outside of the templates, LetterPOP provides no in-house media gallery (photos or videos). So, unless you have your own images and content to add (which admittedly is an easy process), you won't have any media to start with. For such an image heavy tool, this seems like a major oversight.

So far, we have not found any preview tools. It is unclear whether or not you can view your final product prior to publishing.

There doesn't seem to be an option that would allow teachers to have associated student accounts to use in the classroom. While the teacher could use the site, and the students could even take turns working on a single account, this doesn't provide the chance for students to use the tool independently.

Oh yeah... it's not free.

Here are some ideas we came up with for applying LetterPOP in the classroom. 1. Student journals - Students could use templates as a rigid structure to write journal entries on a regular basis, attaching images and publishing their work in a way that is controllably private. (This would necessitate individual student accounts, however.) 2. Annotated portfolio of work samples - Students could scan or import images of their own work and add reflection or self-evaluation. 3. Student reports - Students could use the unique format to compose reports in a structured template, attaching images or even video. 4. Parent newsletters - If you publish a regular newsletter for parents, LetterPOP could provide a web-based archive of home-school communications. There is the possibility for including calendars and announcements that can be updated over time, or invitations and feedback on class events. 5. Teacher portfolio evaluations - A teacher could publish artifacts of his or her own progress within the new NC teacher evaluation rubric, along with reflection or explanation.
 * Some possible applications for your classroom**

From Josh: The more I reflect on LetterPOP's offering, the more ideas I think of for its use in the classroom. The idea of providing a rigid structure for student reflection might provide some much needed help for students who need an extra push toward metacognition and self-regulation. However, I cannot justify paying for a tool that provides nothing more than many other web-based tools do for free. The basic purpose of the tool - publishing flashy newsletters - seems to be the most limited application for the classroom. That says to me that it's just not worth it.
 * The bottom line on LetterPOP**

From Eugene: LetterPOP is easy to use, but extremely limited in scope. I think it would be most beneficial for teachers who are not proficient with word processing and office presentations, and students in elementary school who might need a template to guide them through a basic media presentation. Any teacher or student comfortable with publishing would be very much confined by this site. I find it inexcusable that the site offers the promise of slick presentations and newsletters but no gallery of photographs from which to choose. You would spend as much time searching the Web trying to find applicable art as you would composing the rest of the document.