Thing 11.5 - Evaluation

Kudos to another wonderful guided tour to new web tools. It was amazing and I thank you for putting it together for us.



1. My favorite discovery has to be GoView screencasts. I have wanted to do that for so long and thought it was much more complicated than it turned out to be. I just wish I had my school software so that I could have created a bunch of them before school started. I also like Bookr to create concept books for K and PreK, but will not post the actual books, just the links, on my blog in the future as they are slow to load. Animoto is also a favorite and I will most likely end up with a paid version when school starts so that I can make longer films. Oh, and Tinychat also looks like it has great interview potential.

2. Last year's program got me started and fired up. This program further assisted my learning goals. I am now following three more blog posts in my Google Reader which I discovered along the way. I have learned to do screencasts so that I can clarify learning for students and teachers at school. I have sticky notes full of new learning to pursue as days go by, lists of software to download at school, and new assignments to propose to teachers when we collaborate. Plus second life stories to make people laugh.

3. I was surprised by Twitter. I had looked at it last year and though it was kind of a waste of time. Now I have a much better idea of how and when to use it, and how it's changing the world. And I have a burning desire for an iPhone now which I didn't have before which isn't going over well with my husband! I was also surprised by how much more confidence I have in just trying things out, and not panicking when I'm not sure how to do something. Last year I was not a big fan of Wikipedia, and now I have given in and allow the students to use it for certain applications, and I often check there for things I don't understand, like deep web, but I really like makeuseof, which I didn't know before. I will definitely go there in the future.

4. I think it would have been better if I had gone in for face-to-face when I got to Second Life. It was not intuitive for me, so I think it's great you included times to meet face-to-face this year . Maybe there would have been some iPhones around to play with as well. Mostly it's about giving us just the right information, but not too much, so we really have to do it ourselves and make it ours. I think you have just the right balance here. Please do another one next year if you can.