Week 2: Web Cams, Online Storage, Social Bookmarking OH MY!

I was very interested in the topics discussed in class on Monday and researched this week. I have been using web cams since 2001, so I am pretty familiar with them. I regularly use Skype to "meet" with my future in laws so we can see each other and chat about our lives. They live in New Jersey and we only see them once a year. I have never used social bookmarking, but I am now in love with Delicious. I am going to use DropBox for my online storage, but need to set it up at home because I don't have user rights on my computer at school to do this :(.

I would really like to use web cams in my class to conduct virtual field trips. We have a small field trip budget, which we always seem to go over on, and this seems like a great solution! I read this article last night and was very intrigued.

I am using Delicious to save all my bookmarks now. This has been amazing because I can get into all the bookmarks that I have for school, grad school, and home from anywhere. I am going to create a group for my tech team and try to get them to upload all of their links so we can collaborate and share and save time!!

I don't backup my personal computer often, but am now going to use DropBox to do this. I currently use Google Docs for my documents that I need to use in multiple places. My district has given us the ability to retrieve and edit our files from home via the Internet, but this will be helpful for all other files I want to protect and retrieve from anywhere.

Grad School

I really enjoyed my first class, but being the eager beaver that I am, I read a lot of the session material ahead of time. I am currently an avid user of Google docs, so it will be fun to collaborate with others who have not used it and see what they think.

I am hoping to learn about a lot of useful free tools that I can use in my classroom and bring back to my district, as we are trying to save money in the technology arena. We are trying out OpenOffice right now and I'm using the drawing program with my 3rd graders. If I move back to the middle school level, I would love to give all students a Google account and use the Docs for their classwork.

I'm just really excited to be back in school and am so glad that I found a program that fits my needs and will challenge my brain!