You don’t often think of fraternities and sororities as being the target market for most teacher tools. But a startup called Groopt may have a place in your classroom quite soon.

Groopt started out as, and still basically is, a way for groups of people to have a private social network. It’s like Path with a sprinkling of Edmodo and Facebook. There’s an activity stream, apps, groups, calendars, document sharing, and even WePay for accepting payments.

But the two best features of Groopt you’re going to dig? It’s free and advertisement-free. So it’s great for any teacher looking to try out an Edmodo alternative, be an early adopter, or basically just try to increase the amount of communication in your classroom.

Screenshot of Groopt

As mentioned above, Groopt is not strictly targeted at academic pursuits so it’s built more for informal socializing rather than grade tracking and performance evaluations in the classroom.

That being said, it wouldn’t surprise me if grade management and learning assessments are built into a next version of Groopt. If that happened, it’d certainly give Edmodo a run for its money. Let’s hope so at least. The more competition in that space … the better tools teachers can expect.

Click here to create a Groopt for your classroom, school, friends, etc.

Key Features Of Groopt

• Facebook-like activity stream, but just for your private group / classroom
• Document sharing, group document editing, creation, etc.
• Group calendar (works with iCal, Google Calendar)
• Send targeted texts and emails to members
• iPhone and Android apps for your group
• It’s free!
• No advertisements!
• Buy and sell stuff (field trip tickets, fundraising, etc.)
• Voting / polling tools for all members
• Analytics and tracking of just about every action done on your Groopt site
• Get a custom website that ties into your Groopt page (costs extra, not free but could be good for larger organizations)