1_Technology+Toolbox

Criteria Table

1. Cost: Is the site free to the public? F= Free / $= Cost 2. Advertisements: Does the site have advertisements? Y/N 3. Safety & Security: Is the site safe for students to visit in the classroom ? Can the site be protected? Additional Comments of knowledge gained via exploration & review of Web 2.0 Tools are here as well. 4. Ease of Use: Is it easy to navigate through the site? Easy to create?

/ Additional Comments** ||  ||= **Ease of Use** || Installed Firefox 3.5 ||= F ||= Y || No issue ||  || Highly customizable, nice line up of theNavigation and Bookmarks Toolbars || Able to subscribe to Feed and put it on my toolbar. ||  || Easy to download, install and run. Simple to put RSS feed into Wikispace || Del.icio.us CiteULike ||= F ||= Y || **For my own info:Social bookmarking websites are becoming more and more popular. They allow you to save bookmarks online and Tag/Categorize them with keywords instead of saving them as bookmarks in the favorite’s list of your browser.** Del.icio.us is currently the most used Social Bookmarking software application. CiteULike is a fusion of Web-based social bookmarking services and traditional bibliographic management tools.Citeulike turns the linear 'gather, collect, share' process inherent in academic research into a circular 'gather, collect, share and network' process, enabling the sharing and discovery of academic literature and research papers. I stumbled across CiteuLike and really liked it ! It had a link to AuthorMapper.com which has an incredible map showing places in the world where the research documents are coming from. It has a ton of interesting statistics too. ||  || I found both very easy to use and was able to get directly to topics I was interested in. CiteULike has better credibility as a .org. || Especially like the Sticky Note feature. || Picasa GIMP ||= F ||= N || No issue / Download programs ||  || Picasa is great for photo editing and easy to use, creates awesome collages. GIMP more difficult, not as intuitive || Openomy Glide Personal ||= $ monthly fees F - 10GB ||= Y || It appears **Xdrive** is no longer available, to new customers at least. [] I would reword 14.4 to Glide OS 3.0, doing a search on "Glide Personal" definately does not talk about file sharing.... ||  ||   || Thumbstacks.com ||=   ||= Y || **For my own info:** lets you make presentations right in your browser. It’s easy and intuitive with its what you see is what you get drag and drop editor, and cross browser capabilities. There are ready made themes and styles for fast and consistent presentation building. ||  ||   || Download program ||   || Way cool ! Major resourse /space Hog however, slows down CPU. ||
 * **Web 2.0 Tools** ||= **Cost** ||= **Ads** ||= **Safety & Security
 * Browser Set up
 * Aggregators / Wizz RSS ||= F ||= Y || Teacher chooses appropriateness of feed
 * Social Bookmarking/
 * Search Tools/ Rollyo || F || N || No issue. Could be helpful if one were to take the time to organize their searches, I just don't do enough searching for it to be useful. ||  || Easy to use, although for my personal level of searching, Google does just fine. ||
 * Webstart / Protopage ||= F ||= Y || Can make your page public or private, or set a Group password. ||  || Neat, clean, easy to set up. Widgets add-in easily.
 * Weblogs / Edublogs ||< F, 20 mb free upload space. 5 GB $4.00 per month ||= N || Nice that there are no ads which can distract children from the task at hand. ||  || Free blogs for teachers and students. Nice to get colleagues viewpoints on Educational issues. ||
 * Web-based Word Processing/ Google Docs || F || Y || No issue. ||  || Did not like, found Google's wordprocessing program to be ineffective and frusterating. Not easy to use. ||
 * Web-based Spreadsheets/Google Spreadsheets ||  ||   || TBE ||   ||   ||
 * Assessment, Surveys, Polls/ Surverymonkey ||= F ||= N || Site is secure. Surveys are for private use elsewhere. ||  || Easy to use, variety of survey formats & compilation styles available. ||
 * Podcast & Screencasting/ iTunes ||= F/$ ||=  || Have to know what music is being downloaded. iTunes software itself is free to use, but the music you download costs $. Typically have to have an iPod to use iTunes. ||   || A little too easy to use for teenagers! ||
 * Video/ YouTube ||= F ||= Y || Not safe or secure, sadly students and young children can view just about anything on You Tube. THe content put on You Tube is not monitored closely and very sickening and sad things are being put out for public consumption. ||  || A little too easy for young minds. Need to choose appropriate video. ||
 * Photo and Drawing/
 * File Sharing/ Xdrive
 * Openomy** closed down March 24, 2009. []
 * Presentation Tools/
 * Mapping / Google Earth ||= F ||= N || No issue