Desire2Learn Binder is a free tablet application that allows users to offline D2L course content to their tablet and take full control over the organization and annotation of these course documents. Let’s take a quick look at a few of the things you can accomplish with Binder:
- Fetch Documents: You can retrieve documents from your D2L courses, Dropbox.com, and Skydrive for offline access!
- Annotate Documents: An interactive annotation wheel allows you to highlight, take text notes, strikeout and highlight text, and create freehand notes.
- Status Icons: New items are visibly marked, and you can star items as favorites.
- Stay Organized: Add custom tags to documents and search through text, bookmarks, and annotations.
- Decrease Printing: Save money and help the environment by loading documents in the Binder app instead of printing them out!
GETTING STARTED WITH BINDER:
- In order to initially log in, you’ll need to click here to create an EduDentity account with Desire2Learn (or you can login with Facebook).
- You can then obtain Desire2Learn Binder as a free download via the Apple App Store, Google Play, or the Windows Store.
- Once you’re logged in to the Binder application with your new EduDentity account, you will then need to add OU D2L (http://learn.ou.edu) as a connection, and then authenticate with your standard OUNetID (4×4) and password.
- Once you’re setup, be sure to visit the Desire2Learn Binder community page to provide feedback or request features!
In course content you will now see a button that says “Send to Binder” when viewing certain items. You can click this to send the particular content item to the Binder app for your access! Don’t forget to visit the upgrade page for more information about the changes.
[symple_button url=”http://goo.gl/VspgQl” color=”grey” size=”default” border_radius=”3px” target=”self” rel=”” icon_left=”” icon_right=””]Download for Android[/symple_button] [symple_button url=”https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/desire2learn-binder/id561135998″ color=”grey” size=”default” border_radius=”3px” target=”self” rel=”” icon_left=”” icon_right=””]Download for iPad[/symple_button] [symple_button url=”http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/binder/e61223bc-ed45-4b7d-84d5-ec8ad99fbe7d” color=”grey” size=”default” border_radius=”3px” target=”self” rel=”” icon_left=”” icon_right=””]Download for Windows 8[/symple_button]
Skeptic, I’m with you – I put zero content into the Desire2Learn system and, thank goodness, I don’t need to. Long live the open Internet! For what it’s worth, I think Binder does at least now have the option to send files out to some cloud file management systems. When I checked out Binder last year, it was a totally closed system. Now, though, I think you can import/export so that it is at least conceivable a student could use it to do research, combining different resources and then exporting the annotated files. Kevin, the D2L page I found did not say just what the export options were. Does Binder synch up with Google Drive? If you could let me know, that would be great. I’ve got my students using Google Drive, so even if it is not relevant for my classes, I would want to let them know about Binder and Google Drive integration (if available) in case that is useful in their other classes. So, any info you have about Binder-Google integration would be much appreciated. Thanks!
There is currently not an integration with any Google products, however I know this is on their requested list. The current integrations are with Dropbox.com and Skydrive. The students also have the ability to open email attachments in Binder, as well as share out any annotated content. I have seen a lot of engagement with users and quick product development with the application! Any issues, comments, feature requests can be posted here: http://bindersupport.desire2learn.com/binder. Hope this info helps!
Any info as it becomes available would be great, Kevin – the guys at Desire2Learn hardly ever post anything that is actually useful in the official Desire2Learn blog, so I really appreciate any information you guys share here via this blog, esp. re: Google integration.
Definitely! We’ll keep you all in the loop.
Is there any way for me to make this button vanish ?
I don’t like to see confusing, badly implemented proprietary features like this. In my course, all class materials are out of copyright and can easily be downloaded, read, and annotated with any number of perfectly good file management programs, producing texts none of which depend on the D2l empire for their long-term viability.
Moreover, their servers have been down for the past hour, meaning I can’t even test the program (they tell me to “check your connection”–believe me, D2l, I’m connected to the internet right now. Problem is on your end, guys….)
We don’t seem to be having any current issues utilizing the application. Students are more than welcome to use another application if it better fits their needs. We are excited about Binder because it directly integrates with the learning platform, allowing users to push content items directly to the application from D2L. If you are experiencing issues with the application, please contact 405-325-HELP, and they will be happy to provide you assistance!