Monday, April 8, 2013

Chalkfly - Order School Supplies and Support Teachers in your Community


Chalkfly is a office and school supplies online retailer looking to match wits with Amazon, Staples, and other office supply stores.  There are several categories from over 50,000 supplies that users can choose from.  Chalkfly hopes that users will like their site because it has an easy and simple user interface which will make for a more friendly shopping experience.  Chalkfly has a 365 day return policy, offers of free overnight shipping, and 24 hour customer service.


In order to further separate itself from competitors, Chalkfly will donate 5% of every sale to a school or teacher of the customer's choosing.  Teachers can sign up and include their name and school name in the online registry for parents to complete shopping on the site for their classroom (Similar to a wedding or baby registry).  Customers can also look for a teacher to donate to even if they don't have a registry but have signed up for the website.  If a teacher is not on the list, customers can add their own as well.  If a teacher or school is not selected, Chalkfly will make the donation to a school or teacher in close proximity to the customer.  Learn more about the Registry HERE.

In order to make Chalkfly successful, it would be worthwhile to share it with local businesses as a method of supporting your school while buying supplies they already need.  Teachers could also share with parents for when they are purchasing supplies for their students in the teacher's classroom.

When doing a price comparison, they were cheaper on my favorite pen (Pilot G2) by a penny.  With free shipping and supporting teachers and schools in my area, it is a logical choice in choosing to shop with Chalkfly.  

PrintFriendly - Clean Up How You Print


As a social studies teacher I would have my students complete a current events journal by using articles found on the Internet.  I also required students to include a copy of the article for each entry.  I remember getting several pages for articles because of ads and pictures that were not necessary.  It was a waste of ink and a waste of paper.  With a service like PrintFriendly, students and teachers can use the service to clean up a website to only include the important information for a page and make it more....printer friendly.

To use the service, users can copy and paste a link and get a print preview or they can get a bookmarklet for their browser that will allow them to easily print articles from sites they visit.  It might be worthwhile to have computer lab assistants put this bookmarklet on computers in the lab.  If you have your own blog or teacher website, you can also get a button that visitors can use.

To learn more about PrintFriendly, see the video below.