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.

Web 2.0 and Education

Web 2.0 and Education
     So far I’ve enjoyed this class very much. Not only because of the very interesting tools I’ve seen but also because I know this is the kind of stuff I’ll be using when I reenter the work force. I’m keeping a list of all the tools I’m using and adding them to my resume. It is very empowering to feel like I will bring something to the table when I go looking for a job.
     Since I want to go into the Instructional Technologist arena, I think Jing has been the most useful tool I’ve used to far. I’ve been able to help my parents out with computer issues they have had by showing them how to make Google their home page from 1000 miles away. I think with school financial resources at their limits, helping teachers and staff remotely will be very useful. If someone has a question on how to make Slide Masters in PowerPoint, I can easily make a tutorial and sent it to them electronically. This will save time and money.
     For classroom teachers, some of the Web 2.0 tools can make classrooms very fun places to be. Some of the presentation tools I’ve seen like Anamoto, Prezi and Blabberize can make boring, dry presentation really interesting. The practice sites like Cobocards for making flashcards, and Typingweb for typing practice and Zoodles for preschoolers can be great for rote facts. However, some of these types of sites can be more trouble than they are worth. Sometimes it may be quicker to make flash cards out of index cards. You still must analyze how you need to use the tool.
     There are also many Web 2.0 tools that I think will be universal in education in the near future if they are not already. There are many blog sites that students and teachers can host their blogs, I’ve used Blogger for this class and found it very easy to work with. Social network sites like Facebook, or ones geared to education like Graspr are great ways to communicate and connect. YouTube, TeacherTube and Woopid are very useful for tutorials on technology applications.

Jing & Web 2.0

My Jing is about a Web 2.0 site called Woopid.com. It is a site where you can watch technology training videos or tutorials. I have used Jing last semester but I'm not an expert. It is such an easy program to capture screenshots and video with. The only problem I'm having is uploading to YouTube, it won't recognize the SWF file format. I'm still working on that so I can share it in Youtube. Here it is on screencast.com

Three other sites that I liked were ReadWrite & Think, a site from the International Reading association, busuu.com, a language learning site and blabberize.com, a fun program to make uploaded photos "talk."

What is Cloud Computing?

I think Cloud Computing is doing something on your computer or mobile device when the application is NOT on your computer but on a remote server somewhere. Google is trying to create (maybe they already have) an operating system that is on the cloud. You won't have to download anything, update anything you just connect to the internet. One man in the video called it the "big computer" that we all connect to. For example if PowerPoint was on the Cloud, I wouldn't have to worry about making a presentation and not being able to show it on a different computer because they had an older version of it installed. I could use Google Docs Presentation tool and I'd be able to pull it up on any computer that had an internet connection. Web 2.0 tools are more the applications we use that we can be interactive with. I think of Wikipedia, Facebook, blogs, YouTube when I think of Web 2.0. We might have to have a program on our computer to access these but they can be edited and viewed by anyone with an internet connection. I liked this You Tube of Web 2.0. It really gives you some things to think about.

Animoto vs. Photo Story 3

I did 2 videos using photos of mine of how to make beer. I used Photo Story 3, a Windows program you can download for free. I also used Animoto, a web based download that allows you to do short videos for free or longer ones for a fee.

And my Animoto version can be found on their web site.
I preferred Photo Story 3 because if allowed for more control. It let you decide on transitions and let you put voice for every photo you wanted. Neither option was available in Animoto. I felt like I got to do the work and decide how the final product would look. I think you could use Photo Story 3 more in education. However, Animoto has it's good points too. It's really fun and allows you to make very cool looking videos quickly. I can see this being used more for family photos and fun displays of many kinds of work. Over all I LOVED working with both programs. I have loved working with videos for many years and it is one of the only ways I feel creative and successful.
Finally got my Photo Story up on You Tube...