Nikki Phipps is a freelance writer of numerous articles and other publications, including the premiere issue of Perspectives Magazine. She also maintains a gardening site, GardenCrypt in her spare time. Drawing inspiration from family and past experiences, Nikki believes everyone has something to say that can benefit others, which is why she turned to writing.  “There’s no better tool for learning than that of personal experience.” Nikki resides in NC with her two children and three stepchildren.

Link to Product/website: http://www.simplybox.com/

Description of Product: “SimplyBox is a free service to Capture, Share, and Organize ANYTHING you find on the web.”

Nikki’s Description of Product: SimplyBox is a free organization tool that allows users to quickly and easily save, organize, and share items of interest from the Web. While it’s free to use, you must create an account by registering (also free) and then download the browser extension. If you decide later that you don’t want it, you can easily uninstall SimplyBox at any time.

SimplyBox is available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox. It’s also compatible with Windows and Mac. In addition, SimplyBox works well with many other popular programs and services, such as YouTube, Google, Facebook, Blogs and more.

SimplyBox is easy to use and enables users to select and save only the parts of a page they want, like a sentence or picture, rather than having to bookmark entire pages or email links. Simply click on the “Box and Save” button located on the SimplyBox toolbar whenever you find something that you want to keep. Then draw a box around the item and drag it down to the desired storage box at the bottom of your browser. Boxes can be labeled under any subject or category you want for easy reference and storing.

The “Box and Send” feature allows you to share selected items with others. However, they too must have a SimplyBox account in order to add to, arrange and insert comments into the box. Anytime you want to see your boxed items, click on the SimplyBox logo in the toolbar.

Homeschool Uses: SimplyBox is a great tool for homeschoolers. It’s good for organizing online resources, blog posts, future projects, research materials, and presentation. Homeschool parents can create boxes of information in nearly any subject that coincides with their current or future topics, placing items inside as they come across them.

Although children under 13 cannot create their own accounts, they can use their parents’ account for organizing and saving pertinent educational materials. Older kids, especially those who process information better visually, might find SimplyBox an easier way to keep up with their resource materials. Even better, SimplyBox’s sharing capabilities allow homeschoolers to collect and share resources, thoughts, and ideas for collaborating with others.

Content and Safety: It is perfectly safe to download and use SimplyBox. No one other than those you choose to share boxes with can view boxes. As previously stated, children under 13 cannot create an account. However, parents should always make a point to keep track of anything placed in boxes by monitoring their older children’s accounts.

Nikki’s Experience Using the Product: Simply put, I love it! I wish I would have used this years ago. As someone that performs a lot of online research, I’m continuously bookmarking pages to refer back to as references. Now with SimplyBox, all I have to do is box and save only the particular point of interest from the page or site. No more painstakingly looking for the targeted information only to find that the link is no longer valid. Since I’ve done quite a bit of research into my family tree, I used genealogy as one of my SimplyBox subjects. I collected and placed some of my previous research notes from bookmarked sites into the box. As an easy reference, you can click on items in the box to go to the site, if desired. Now I can finally delete those bookmarks!

Tutorial or Promotional Video of the Product: SimplyBox provides an easy to follow product overview video here.  Take a look and see how easy it is to create visual bookmarks!

Summary: SimplyBox is great for those who do a lot of web research. Homeschooling families can use it for collecting educational resources, lessons, videos, and more. They can even collaborate with other homeschoolers for team projects, ideas, and other homeschool-related materials.

Editor’s Note: Check out these other FREE Organizational Tools:
The Ultimate Online Organizer. Perfect for Homeschooling Families!
A Labor Day Library Challenge: How We’re Conquering Chaos in Our Home Library