Coming into the Audio Visual Class under Dr. Cyrus, I thought I was savvy enough to find my way through the course and even consider it a breeze. What I have truly learned is that the exposure she has brought upon us only made me feel like I was from the caveman era and sheltered from the true exploit of the World Wide Web. I have also learned that I am a digital-immigrant who has made the decision to be a part of the ever-growing digital world.
Here are some technologies tools that I have decided to try and assess for my future use. I will be rating through caveman clubs since I am coming out of the cave and entering into the internet highway; 1 being complicated and hard to use to 5 being user friendly.
+ Delicious (http://delicious.com)
I believe this site was the most practical tool I have ever applied during my audiovisual course as well as with other areas of my career. What I enjoyed most was being able to be find a computer and pull up any important bookmarked site that I needed because I could not remember what the right website was. I also liked that I could place tags per bookmark to remind me what the website was about through my personal notes posted and the tags I created. This has made my life a little less chaotic especially in the electronic world so I give it 5 caveman clubs and a plus because it has enhanced my organizing of addresses.
+MOODLE (http://campus.uogdistance.com/course)
This is an excellent tool that I feel all schools could use not just for college professors, but I think teachers in the secondary school level could really put some power into the hands of a parents. The fact that a student can place their assignment online at their leisure before it is actually due makes it easier to balance and work and classroom assignments. Imagine if a parent could check on their child’s MOODLE account to see that there were some projects or assignments due that the child did not work on. This would be such a wonderful bridge that a teacher and parent would have to help this student become productive. This is why I gave it a plus on top of my 5 caveman club.
Doodle KitÔ (http://doodlekit.com/home)
Doodle Kit looks fresh and interesting. At first sight, I thought it was a site for the UPS ;-) especially with all the browns and golds. I like how you are able to keep a blog, build your own website, and how they offer up a lot of ideas to select from. It was overwhelming for me, but I still found it quite interesting and fun. I need more time to get through the site, but I did enjoy poking around the site that I give them 4 caveman clubs.
ZOHO® Work Online (http://www.zoho.com/)
ZOHO looked so impressive. I enjoyed venturing through their available programs (i.e. calendar, PowerPoint, conference room etc.). It was nice to see that there was so much to offer not just a cool email system. Unfortunately, I love PowerPoint and the idea that I could have a conference meeting anywhere with out all the attendees needing to be in the same room. I found the program to be constricting, limited in pictures and quite controlling of what I was able to do. I like freedom during my creation of a power slide. The calendar was alright, I thought it was nice to see that I could post anywhere without having to open another tab to enter my appointments. What I did not notice or maybe just did not find was an alarm for me to set up a reminder for the day before. This to me is a must especially when I have other activities to attend. ZOHO was not hard to use, but not enough lee way to play with. All in all, I give it 3 clubs.
TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/04/very-early-look-at-synthasites-ajax-website-builder/)
The content on the web site does not offer too much and I was not exactly pulled in by the overwhelming amount of color and samples of what they had to offer. The most color I saw came from the green header that was used to spell “Tech”. Just the start of the page was not inviting so I did not really feel like trekking through this site. I give it 3 caveman clubs.
Mashable the Social Media Guide (http://mashable.com)
Wow…links to every where…okay almost every type of new sites or blogs. There were a lot of how to tutorials. I know I am going to have to take more time to get familiar with this site. I even felt like I knew what I was doing surfing this site. I found that all the iconic symbols were easy to identify with and labeled so well that I was not afraid to venture around. I think it is a great website. I invite you to take a gander and stay for a while. Coming out of my cave is looking better and better as I get more comfortable surfing. I give it 5 caveman clubs.
WEBON™ on Angelfire (http://webon.angelfire.lycos.com/learnmore.html)
Webon feels like a site for the more electronic savvy or as they say the digital-local. Yes there were many features i.e. blog creations, guestbook and albums and so forth. It is a free hosting site that is partnered with Angelfire.com. They offer a sort of tutorial to guide you thru things. They have all you need to try and build your own website; this made things a little simpler although I still fell apprehensive about doing so (baby steps you know…). Many of the controls are similar to that of Microsoft Word or publisher. Basically you drag and drop icons to insert the content you want to include. This is though a great site to build a free website using very basic skills. I give it 4 caveman clubs.
tripod (http://www.tripod.lycos.com/)
Tripod was simple, had some color...not exactly splashed with excitement, but it looked nice. There were a total of 6 featured sites to go to, not as much as the previous web building sites I visited which was quite interesting. Going through the site, I felt limited in what I could do, but all in all I did not feel excited enough to want to continue on my search. Give it a shot…maybe you might find more to it than I did since I am still new at all of this overwhelming introduction of electronic information I feel like I am still in the grab me stage which this site did not do and it was there so I give them 2 caveman clubs.
I hope you enjoyed my comments on these particular tools I was able to look at, use, and even browsed through. It was most interesting and it did set a fire under my seat because I know I will be visiting one or two more sites more frequently that I anticipated. It is always wise to give even new things a try…you never know what you are missing until you do. Thank you Dr. Cyrus for helping us relate education and the internet highway together to help make even us digital-immigrants comfortable. Practice makes you better…
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