'Mo Tools, 'Mo Problems?
The new semester is here! Time to get cracking on the last missing link regarding my A5 module: New Media in Foreign Language Education. For starters, we were introduced to a variety of different free-online tools which might (or might not) help our teaching experience. Thinking back to last semester's course on Presenting Content I had already seen the likes of Dragontape, Glogster, Titanpad, and Dropbox. Withing the first three sessions of this course I have already expanded my knowledge to further stages of enlightenment and am on the verge of becoming a Jedi - well-trained in the ancient art of online-tooling.
Delicious.com: Today the problem with trying to find useful content on the web is not that the content might not be there but that you might have to fight through a clusterfuck of useless information before you garner meaningful results. Delicious claims that it can change all that. If you're not a bookmark-specialist you might know the problem. After hours of exhaustive research you might have found a lot of interesting links but not all of them suit your current project. However, you would like to make use of them later on and you simply add them to your bookmark list. More often than not you will end up with a huge, unorganized list of links - not knowing what half of them contain. Delicious allows you to tag your links and enter additional information before you store them into different "stacks". This way you can browse through your links with specific tags and find the correct websites for your current project or teaching unit. Delicious also gives you the opportunity to use "stacks" that other users have created and sells us on being a living, breathing database that is constantly evolving.
Last Thoughts: Delicious is helpful, no doubt, however, I wouldn't use it which is in part due to my preference for organizing my bookmarks in the browser I'm using (mostly Safari, but also Firefox from time to time). As I spend quite some time on the web as it is, I've also become quite adept at using search engines and those tedious web searches for information aren't quite as fruitless as they might be for someone who doesn't spend hours on end browsing the web. Another thing that Delicious does not spare you is to check the tagged sites for their credibility and usefulness if you're using someone else's stack. As a misanthrope I'm quite skeptical of other people's findings and still prefer to do all the work myself.
Last Thoughts: Delicious is helpful, no doubt, however, I wouldn't use it which is in part due to my preference for organizing my bookmarks in the browser I'm using (mostly Safari, but also Firefox from time to time). As I spend quite some time on the web as it is, I've also become quite adept at using search engines and those tedious web searches for information aren't quite as fruitless as they might be for someone who doesn't spend hours on end browsing the web. Another thing that Delicious does not spare you is to check the tagged sites for their credibility and usefulness if you're using someone else's stack. As a misanthrope I'm quite skeptical of other people's findings and still prefer to do all the work myself.
Weebly.com: A requisite for passing this course is to create an E-Portfolio. What this means in particular is that we have to create a website and feed it with our completed tasks and findings. You know what that means, right? Crack out the HTML-manual and get cracking. But wait, what's that? I don't even need to know how to write in code anymore? A website can do all of that for me? Weebly.com is the emancipator for all the tech-illiterates and HTML-analphabets out there. You may choose a pre-designed layout, create different pages with hierarchies and drop-down menus, and fill your page with images, texts, or RSS-feeds.
Last Thoughts: Granted, weebly isn't the first free online website-builder out there. When I participated in this course a couple of semesters back we used Wordpress in order to create a blog and that worked just fine. However, in comparison to programs such as Jimdo there is a huge advantage to using weebly: no ad-space!!! What distinguishes a professional grade website from your average run-of-the-mill website is that it doesn't give you eye-cancer immediately due to all the pop-ups and pornographic ad's. Another huge advantage of weebly is that it still allows you to enter HTML-codec so you're not merely working with a finished product but you may tamper with it as well. Designing is easy and intuitive and most features are free. To include video files an upgrade to weebly-pro becomes necessary but all in all weebly is a great tool for both teachers and students. I could imagine an english-course where I upload all the course material and the tasks or a student project like a newspaper or news-blog.
Last Thoughts: Granted, weebly isn't the first free online website-builder out there. When I participated in this course a couple of semesters back we used Wordpress in order to create a blog and that worked just fine. However, in comparison to programs such as Jimdo there is a huge advantage to using weebly: no ad-space!!! What distinguishes a professional grade website from your average run-of-the-mill website is that it doesn't give you eye-cancer immediately due to all the pop-ups and pornographic ad's. Another huge advantage of weebly is that it still allows you to enter HTML-codec so you're not merely working with a finished product but you may tamper with it as well. Designing is easy and intuitive and most features are free. To include video files an upgrade to weebly-pro becomes necessary but all in all weebly is a great tool for both teachers and students. I could imagine an english-course where I upload all the course material and the tasks or a student project like a newspaper or news-blog.
Dragontape.com: The web has literarily millions of videos stored online of platforms such as Youtube, so why not use them as a teacher? With Dragontape you do not even need to know how to edit video files anymore to create your own multimedia content. You may choose any video from the youtube-database, drag it into your editing interface and start cropping and mixing. History teachers may rid themselves of Guido Knopp, since they can now create their own videos, while English teachers can show authentic footage of native speakers by simply saving their video online and showing it in-class. And most importantly: it is free of charge!
Last Thoughts: The intuitive and easy interface of Dragontape certainly fits the bill. When I worked with this tool it took me less than 45 minutes to create a 10 minute video - if only everything were this easy. However, all of this comes at a price. It is not possible to edit frame by frame (obviously!), so transitions might not be as smooth as you'd like. You're also limited to your respective countries youtube database and might not have access to all videos on the web. If you wish to further edit your video material by using effects or creating chapters with captions or titles you should still stick to more "complicated" tools like Adobe (or purchase a Mac!).
Last Thoughts: The intuitive and easy interface of Dragontape certainly fits the bill. When I worked with this tool it took me less than 45 minutes to create a 10 minute video - if only everything were this easy. However, all of this comes at a price. It is not possible to edit frame by frame (obviously!), so transitions might not be as smooth as you'd like. You're also limited to your respective countries youtube database and might not have access to all videos on the web. If you wish to further edit your video material by using effects or creating chapters with captions or titles you should still stick to more "complicated" tools like Adobe (or purchase a Mac!).