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Thing 8: Collaborating, Connecting, Sharing

For this week's activity, I had a hard time pulling myself away from Google Tools. I really find that they are a fine collaboration, creation and archival tool, and I wonder if I will find any tools to replace Google Drive. I tried TitanPad, and created an account for our School Library. I like that it does not require an email, and that it can be shared so easily and instantly. Still, I miss the templates, the tools that all work together, and the brand recognition of Google Tools. I can see using it with students for collaborations, but wonder if they will use it outside of school. SlideShare and DropBox already have my loyalty. We have sent videos across the country, shared files with librarians across the state, and created departmental folders for collaboration with DropBox. We are so fond of it that a colleague and I requested that the District put a shortcut to DropBox on every desktop in the District. Since we are a District of SMART Boards and SMART technology, we were sharing our Notebook presentations in PowerPoint format at first, and have a few shared through SlideShare. I have registered with Scribd, but have not felt as comfortable using it as I am with DropBox and SlideShare. I revisited Scribd this week, and was struck by the public nature of the site. If the other tools are doing the job for me, I think that I will stick with them, and keep Scribd for another day. We have tried WikiSpaces, and PBWorks. When we work with students, we find that Kidblog works very well. It is attractive, easy to monitor, and easy to edit. We are using Pinterest, so I tried Popplet. It took so long to load, and was so much more difficult to add links and images than Pinterest or Learnist, that I don't see myself using it with the students. So I guess we all find the tools that work best for us, get comfortable with them, and a new tool has to be pretty amazing to lure us away. But it is still fun to explore new tools...and who knows? We may find another Pinterest that fills a need that we didn't even know we had!! :-)

Comments

pollyalida said…
I had to go check out popplet again and found the same problem. I can't seem to get it to work on Chrome or Firefox. Not sure what's up with that. May just be my computer. Glad you explored a few new tools anyways! Just ran across a new filesharing tool that's pretty nice. Simple, free, no signup! copy.com
February 28, 2013 at 5:47 PM
Bookreeader said…
Thanks! Copy.com is cool! But....as is the case with many tools, I had to save a link to Delicious, rather than to Pinterest, since Pinterest could not find an image to post. So we wind up using two tools to do one job.

I want ONE tool for each task. I want one place to save links, one place to share, one place to publish....I am mourning the atrophy of the Google Tools. Maybe this should be a post.
March 17, 2013 at 4:48 PM
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