About

Hi! My name is Zak Kolar. I'm a Digital Learning Teacher in Massachusetts. This website is a collection of free web apps and other resources for digital literacy educators.

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:

Could it be useful to others?
Is it easy for others to set up and use?
Will it work without updates or maintenance for the foreseeable future?
Can it be used without costs for the users or me?
Can I be sure people won't cause harm with it?

In short, everything here would exist whether I share it or not and the hosting costs are currently negligible. If this ever changes, I'll explore options that prioritize transparency and privacy.

Can you add _ feature to _?

As a full-time teacher who maintains this site in my free time, I'm not able to fulfill every request I receive (as much as I'd like to help!) That said, you're always welcome to reach out with feedback and ideas. If you're a developer and want to customize things yourself, 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 _____?

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.

Credits