About
Hi! My name is Zak Kolar. I'm an elementary Digital Learning Teacher in Waltham, MA. This website is a collection of free web apps and other resources for educators to teach digital literacy skills to students and/or to help set up their lessons.
Free? What's the catch?
The apps and resources on this site are all items that I have created or modified to use in my own teaching.
These are the questions I consider before posting something:
- Is it likely to be useful to others?
- Is it straight-forward for someone else to set up and use?
- Will it work without updates or maintenance for the foreseeable future?
- Can it be used without creating any costs for the users or me?
- Do I know people won't intentionally or unintentionally cause harm with it?
This all means that the materials here don't cost me anything (time-wise or financially) to share, which makes it easy to post for free.
Can you add _______ feature to ________?
Unfortunately, I don't have time to fulfill every customization request I receive. However, I read every message I get and keep a running wish list to work on as I have time. Feel free to get in touch if you have any feedback or requests!
If you're a developer and want to create your own customizations, I post the source code for most projects on GitHub.
Are you selling my data?
Short answer:
Nope! Even if I wanted to sell it, almost no data is collected.
Longer answer:
Each posted item includes more information about its data/privacy practices, but the general rule is no data is shared with me or third parties unless explicitly noted. Even in those infrequent cases, it's only to provide functionality and never for commercial purposes (e.g. connecting to Google to add content to a Doc). Products labeled "free" should not come at the hidden cost of your personal data.
If the philosophical stance isn't convincing, it would also be a headache on my end to navigate privacy laws such as FERPA, COPPA, CCPA, and GDPR. The easiest way to comply with data regulations is to not collect anything.
Can you sign a data agreement so that I can use _____?
As an individual teacher who maintains this site in my free time, I don't have the capacity to review and enter into contracts. However, as mentioned above, no data is collected by me or third parties unless explicitly noted.