Moodle vs. Blackboard

     I think both Moodle and Blackboard applications are great, and it was a lot of fun to see behind the scenes. I’ve often wondered how and what the instructors see from their point of view.
     After a few sessions of poking around, I think both offer the same capabilities so the only major difference I see is the layout or look. So I think it is totally subjective whether one is better than the other as far as the feel goes. I think their functionality is the same, but I don’t know if they will interface with district Student Information Systems well or at all. So from a teacher stand point, I think they are both great. I will say I preferred the layout of Moodle, it just felt easier to navigate and I found the vocabulary they used more straight forward. Ever since my first class with Blackboard, I’ve found I had to dig and dig to find what I was looking for and never felt like I was digging in the right place. I haven’t had to use Moodle for a class and have only seen brief presentations on it from other classmates in other classes, so I haven’t worked a lot with it. I liked the Moodle format where you add assignments and such from the calendar view.
     If I was in charge of picking one of the other, I’d have to make sure it worked well with the district Student Information System and if Moodle did, I would have to go with them. Who can argue with FREE. When I was first poking around, I kept saying to myself, “WOW, this is free?” It looks so professional and polished and it had every single choice any teacher could ever think of for creating an online class. As you can tell, I was very impressed. Go Moodle!!

Camtasia vs. CamStudio

And the winner is...CAMTASIA by a landslide.  The victory was a total embarrassment for CamStudio who showed no skill or any finesse.  Seriously, I had so much trouble with CamStudio and will never again use it.  I could use the so called software properly but when I tried to save to the SWF format I got error after error.  I uninstalled 3 times and continued to have the same problems and then started getting more and different errors.  I finally used my husbands older PC and got the SWF html page to not give me an error, but I don't know if what I submitted was viewable.  I took the AVI format and saved it in Windows Movie Maker and was finally able to save to Youtube.  I can't wait to uninstall for a final time and be done with it.  It has really given Open Source Software a very bad taste in my mouth and will be very hard pressed to try any more OSS again.  Camtasia on the other hand was FUN.  I've used video editing software for a LONG time, iMovie starting back in 2000. I've actually taught a class on iMovie and got my first glimpse of my dream job.  It was easy to use and fun to add elements to.  It came out great in my opinion, although I'd done the Evernote tutorial so many times on CamStudio, I'd lost most of my enthusiasm.
Here is the Camtasia version...

This is the CamStudio version...

Ed Tech Funding

I taught in TX for a short while but was very impressed with the standards and funding.  So when I came across this article about the very deep cuts, more so than CA for the next school year I was interested.  It talks about the BILLIONS they will be short next year and some of the cuts, especially to the ed tech funds they will suffer.  It got me thinking more and more about education funding and patterns I've noticed.  In my state of Colorado each  student funding is supposed to be cut by $500 and $600.  So class sizes will increase and non-essential teachers will be cut.  I was a non-essential teacher for 5 years, I taught in a computer lab. 4 of the 5 yrs I was part time and they only had a certified teacher in the lab because we were a low performing Title 1 school that got a lot of money thrown at us.  Most schools in our district have a para making $9 an hour in the computer lab, not to say they are not qualified, but they are mostly showing kids fun stuff on the computer and not working with teachers on quality lessons (in my opinion and from what I've seen).  I had a serious debate with  myself about home schooling my 5 year old next year.  She has 25 in her class now and it's only going be to worse next year.  I just kept saying to myself "This is not good enough for her."  It makes me so sad to think that public school, which I have been a huge advocate for, is not good enough for my daughter.  This degree in Ed Tech might be great but if no one has the money to hire me, than I don't know if it will do me any good.