What is Penzu?
Penzu is a private online journal and diary. It changes the traditional pen and paper to the Internet, where you can write your thoughts, fears, aspirations, choices, and many more. Keeping a journal or a diary is a good way to get smarter, to have less stress and to be healthier.
How does it work?
First, you will have to create an account. After that, you will log in with your email address and your password. When you will be logged in, you will immediately come to your journal. Then, you will have to name your journal and you can use any name you want. To write an article, you will have to click on new entry. After that, a new journal page will appear and then you can start writing about anything you want. Penzu is completely private unless you decide to make it public. To see all the entries that you have written so far, you just have to click on view entries. Then, all your entries will appear, from the most recent to the oldest, with all their dates of publication and if you have shared them or not. To modify your settings, just click on the settings icon. You will have the opportunity to change your journal theme, which means your journal cover, front, page theme and pad theme. To lock your journal, you just have to click on the lock. You will have to choose a password and a hint for your journal password. You have the choice to remember your password and auto lock your journal. After that, click on lock your journal and it will be blocked. As you are writing in your journal, you can add tags, insert images, modify text formatting, customize entry, entry versions and toggle zen mode. Penzu also saves automatically your text so you don’t have to worry if there is a problem with your electronic devices. Penzu is completely free and there is no storage limit so you can write as many articles as you wish. There are two pro version of Penzu. The first one is called Penzu pro and it starts from 4.99$/month. It includes encryption locking, customs fonts & colors, global research, entry tagging and Penzu post. The other one is called Penzu pro + and it starts from 9,99$/month. It includes versions & recovery, premium handwritten fonts, fullscreen zen mode, military grade encryption and premium support.
Penzu Classroom
With Penzu classroom, teachers can share documents and assignments. Teachers can keep a track of individual documents from each student and they can automatically send them back online with comments and a grade. You can add instructions, grading scheme and a due date. The documents and assignments are automatically updated; there is no need to send it back every time. Made by the creator of Penzu. The teacher signs up and creates a special type of journal, called a classroom journal. The classroom journal is protected by a unique class code. When students enter Penzu, they type the code and they can instantly join the class. The teacher can share entries with the class and make them public. Penzu classroom costs 49,99$ per year.
My opinion on Penzu as an ESL teacher?
I believe that keeping a journal is a great way to express how you feel. I think it is a great way to get more personal with students and to help and understand them. Students can write a journal, but they can also write articles about things that interest them, poems, food recipes and many more. What is great about Penzu is that you can access it anywhere from any devices. Penzu can be used on computers, cellphones and electronics tablets. Nowadays, many schools have Ipads and computers. Writing online is a great alternative from the traditional pen and paper. With Penzu, students may explore a new passion for writing online. On one hand, the fact that Penzu is private may encourage students to be confident because they know that their classmates will not see their publications. On the other hand, as we saw on our Content-Based Writing class, peer-review is really helpful. On Penzu, students can read each other texts and give feedbacks. This is a great way for students to learn from their mistakes and to have another person’s point of view. One disadvantaged is that the free version does not offer that many options, but the pro version is quite expensive for school since the budgets are very limited and restricted. In conclusion, even if it would not be my first choice, I think that Penzu is a good tool and that it can be used for a multiple of possibilities.
dorothygrenier 