Week 6: Oh what a night!

This is going to be an interesting posting, as while I write this, my wife is in labor. The first stages of labor often take several hours (we've been here since noon) so I've got down time and wanted to try to get this in while she's laying and contracting.

I thought this week's choices were diverse, interesting and offered some good potentials. Jing and Screen-cast-o-matic seem like interesting free alternatives to the standard camtasia/captivate/snapz pro options. As noted on the Jing site, it is like camtasia lite. But the alternative is that it provides faster access, quicker deliverables and most importantly it's free. I thought screen-cast-o-matic was interesting as well, but it seemed like a cheaper version of Jing. Jing's site seemed much more organized and clean, whereas s.c.o.m's was more jumbled and not as professionally clean. I haven't watched their tutorials as much, but I think given the options I'd go with Jing.

Diigo is another choice that provides an alternative to del.icio.us but kicks it up a notch with the highlighting and notetaking options. You can also more easily group yourself together with others, as we have done in the 5650 class to pool our resources. I have found del.icio.us an interesting way to get some sites I never would have found, and I often bookmark sites and forget what was so neat about them that made me bookmark them in the first place. So this seems to have some good potential for that.

Finally, I think Poll Everywhere is just what high school teachers everywhere have been looking for (if teachers could allow students to use text messages in school that is.) It combines the ability to test your audience with the technology students love to use anyway. I had experience with polling and question systems like this in my classroom experience, and found that the students loved it as a tech, yet simple alternative to raising their hands or taking tests in class on paper. I think there is some neat potential with this. On a larger scale (and with their membership packages) I could see this being a great easy way to test large scale audiences.

So, hopefully this baby will come soon and my world will be completely upheaved. In the meantime, that's all for now.