Week 13- Online Application Reviews

After reviewing the list of online applications for office suites and photo editing, I went through and tried each and every application. The application for office suites that I found to be the best in my opinion was Google Documents. I loved all the photo editing applications and each had its own pluses. In the end I have chosen Sumo Paint because currently in my Computer Literacy class we use Adobe Photoshop and this application really mirrors it in look and usage.

Google Documents

Google documents has many great features that make it very user friendly such as being able to convert existing documents, can share easily, can collaborate on documents with others, and many more things. In the word document portion of this office suite, you have all the same features of Microsoft Word. Some nice features of this software is that it auto saves every few seconds, your documents are also saved on a server that can be accessed from anywhere you have Internet access. Another great feature is the collaboration feature, this is where you can give authorship rights to multiple people and you can work on a document together. You can actually all be at separate computers typing at the same time and within seconds see on your screen what everyone has been typing or working on. This is great to use for students to use especially for group assignments. The collaboration piece is great because teachers can see exactly what each student did because it is color coded for what they typed. No more one person doing the whole project and everyone getting the credit. This application also eliminates the excuses we get from students that their printer ran out of in or their printer is broken, they now can easily access it from the web and print it at school or share it with the teacher.

Besides the Word portion in the application, there are softwares for Presentations (similar to Microsoft PowerPoint), Spreadsheets (Similar to Microsoft Excel), and Forms. I really like the Forms software. This is great to develop permission slips or even create simple online quizzes. The quiz results are easily tabulated and compiled into a Google spreadsheet. You can even have the quizzes automatically graded for you. All this is done through giving the students the link to the Form you created. This would be an awesome tool to check for student understanding in classrooms that have a 1 to 1 computer to student program.

I totally would recommend sharing this with students and colleagues. The possibilities are endless with this tool. Oh by the way, did I mention that this is free. I did some research to see how much we spend for licensing per computer for Microsoft Office and I found out that we spend $54 per computer every time we buy a computer. After finding this out, I instantly thought of all the money that could be spent elsewhere if we used free applications. Maybe we could be a 1 to 1 school district or at least the elective teachers could get Interactive White Boards like the core teachers got this year.

Sumo Paint

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we currently use Adobe Photoshop in our Computer Literacy curriculum. I explored and used Sumo Paint and found that it is very similar not only in looks but how it operates to Adobe Photoshop. Anyone who has used Adobe Photoshop could very easily use Sumo Paint. The tool bars are identical and only look slightly different probably because of copyrights, but are easily identified. Other benefits are that the application is online, so you can access it anywhere you have Internet access and you don't have to take up space on your computer because the program is not downloaded to your computer like Adobe Photoshop. On different feature that Sumo Paint has is that your color palette and layer palette are easily accessible on the right side of the page. I tried to find out what it costs for each computer license of Adobe Photoshop and nobody I asked had a precise answer for me. I know if I were to buy it, it would cost $100 for an individual copy. I imagine there is a school discount and bulk discount, so I would guess that it would probably cost the district around $60 per seat. Again, Sumo Paint is FREE so we could be saving money in this tight economy or at least use the money in different areas.

I feel free softwares and applications are going to be the ways in which education saves money when it comes to technology. It is the way of the future!! I already use several open source applications in my technology lab. Hope these reviews help you.

Week 11 - Website Creation

I created this website because my school is thinking about having each teacher in the building create a website that would be linked to our school website. My principal would like us to have the capability to post what we are working on during the week and what homework assignments that students will have for the week. Since I am an elective teacher, I decided to include a syllabus or a course description for each grade level. I only have students for nine weeks, so this will help keep parents informed. I like the fact that parents or students can subscribe to my announcements and homework posts. This will give them instant updates anytime I post something new. I also did the contact me form that way if there are any questions, parents or students can easily reach me. Here is the link to my website: https://sites.google.com/site/pinewoodmiddleschooltechnology

Week 10- Concept Mapping

The concept map above represents a mapping for creating a website for the classes that I teach at my middle school. One thing that my school is trying to start is to have each teacher create a web page for their classes. Because I teach multiple grade levels and classes, I have the idea to create one website that contains several pages for each class. Each page for each subject will be connected back to a homework hot line page that will be updated weekly with the weeks assignments. There will also be a page that contains resources for each class for students and parents. This is a nice tool to be able to organize your thoughts as you start a project. Students could easily use this application to construct an outline for projects or papers that they are writing.