What an impressive list... I am forwarding the entire thing on to several friends! (Me... who never forwards anything!) There were some familiar sites but most of them were new to me.
I was most interested and excited about the organizational sites, so I checked out Backpack, Zoho, and Wufoo. Many of these sites are geared for businesses, but I thought it could also work perfectly for our family. A shared calendar and centralized place for a "to do" list is exactly what we need! Wufoo wasn't what I was looking for at all - it's more of a forms generator. Zoho looked okay... lots to offer in the way of online collaboration but I didn't find a calendar function. (But it does look like they could give MS Office and also Google Docs a run for their money.)
Backpack, on the other hands, was AMAZING. There is a clear reason that it won first place in this category. After watching 4 or 5 of the tutorials, browsing through screenshots, and getting downright giddy about this gold mine I decided to sign up for an account. I was crushed! It's not all free!!!!! There is a free option that allows you to create shared pages (to-do lists, upload files, etc.) but you don't get the calendar with the free account. The cheapest paid plan is $7 a month.
There are several uses for this tool in a library. The calendar is good enough that I would use it to schedule classes. Teachers would have the ability to write detailed notes about what they need, upload relevant handouts, and I could automatically send reminders. I'm not sure how we could/would limit the amount of classes since I can't play around with the calendar for free. Within a library staff, we could create working to-do lists and store shared documents that we all need access to.
In my despair, I registered at Zoho. It does look impressive, but without the calendar option I don't think I'd use it as an organizer.
I am part of the ASD Librarians Ning that Ann created, but I hadn't visited it in ages. I A) found it again, and then B) signed in and poked around for a while. Someone left a comment for me in October 2007 that I just saw (oops!) but in my defense I have been on a leave of absence, right? I was a little surprised to see the top ad that said "Pimp Your Profile" and didn't like that it displayed to everyone that I was online. I'm not surprised that the district would put this site in the blocked category, but it's such a useful tool when used properly. (I could see classroom discussions with this format - if the entire 8th grade is reading a certain book, kids from all teams could discuss it instead of just within a single classroom.)
The Traveler IQ game was really fun, but I am terrible at geography. I stuck to the US game and only made it to level 4 with an IQ of 97. It's hard to get too precise when you are trying to click so fast, and those eastern states are all so close together! (Excuses, excuses!)
Another great trivia toy I've found is FunTrivia.com. You can set up daily tournaments for a group of people here.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Oh, Maine, Massachusetts, its all the same - Right???
I agree that NING has some limitations for using with students and would have to be monitored very carefully. A lot of discussion, especially at MS/HS about how much is the responsibility of the school/teacher and how much responsibility is it reasonable to expect students to take in using these tools for school projects.
I haven't checked out Backpack - but boy do I get the frustration of getting really excited about a tool and then getting blocked out of the best parts unless you pay. I am playing around with using googlecalendar as a shared calendar for the asdlibrarians wiki this coming year for people to be able to add upcoming events etc. We will see how that goes. Have to admit that for shared editing, I'm still a big fan of googledocs.
Ann
Hey Staci! Glad you like our game. You can chat about strategy and compare scores with other Traveler IQ addicts in our travel forums
Louise Brown
TravelPod Community Manager
Post a Comment