Prior to Monday's class, I was completely oblivious to the concept of online file storage. Through reviewing a variety of options, I found DropBox to be the best fit for me. I was so excited to connect home files to my school computer without e-mailing or using my flash drive...only to find that DropBox is a blocked site. I have requested access to the site for file sharing and am waiting to see what our tech dept. decides. I frequently work from home and am excited at the prospect of sharing files with colleagues, especially those who I frequently team up with to teach and plan.
Investigating social bookmarking, although cool in concept, was overwhelming. All the gadgets and features offered by each of the sites are awesome...the amount of articles, etc. are unreal. As an adult, I think the sites could be useful once I become comfortable with them. As far as classroom use...I'd have to find some way to appease the instant gratification most of my students are looking for when using the internet. I think for our spring research project a social bookmarking site would be useful for site sharing but I'd have to find some way to control the chaos that could ensue. The writing of sites on post-its to post on our site share board has always worked in the past albeit a few typing snafus sometimes! StumbleUpon was fun to Stumble through...digging and burying in Digg...The terminology of some of the sites would surely appeal to (some) students!
Web Cams hold great appeal to me individually, but I am still hesitant to use one in the classroom. Reading with and/or to younger children at some of our elementary schools, streaming our storytelling, or talking to an author in a Q/A session are all realistic possibilities for my classroom. I, along with my children, regularly use a Web Cam to talk to my brother, sister, and niece through Skype. Skype is extremely user friendly and offers a lot of features beyond the basics, such as group meetings and instant sharing with Skype contacts through something called InnerPass. I was able to chat this week with a classmate in Google chat...Excellent sound quality and the pop out box is hugely beneficial if you need to talk and work on something, like a Google Docs, at the same time!
