Pam Callahan’s EDUC628 Blog
Online Education Course
Building a toolbox
If I were recommending a good beginner’s toolbox for someone, these are the items I would recommend and why. First, high speed Internet access. I have become very spoiled with fast access. Since my husband is a web page designer, we have had broadband since 1998. It was the determining factor in buying our current house. Even though we are in a small community (Jeffersonville, outside Mt. Sterling), our community had just gotten new cable and, even after three years, we are still the only ones on the street who use it.
My second recommendation is a good, reliable email account like Gmail. I have had problems with my hotmail account, and since I have had it so long, I get so much spam even with my filters set high. Gmail does a much better job of distinguishing the junk mail and putting it where it belongs.
My third recommendation is a good quality browser. I have tried many of them, and my browser of choice is Firefox. I love the tabs. IE7 is my second favorite. For a while, I was a big Opera fan, but when Firefox went above 2.+ version, it surpassed Opera.
Since enrolling in this class, my two new recommendations are the gator feed and the blogs. Since I have two online classes that use the feed, I found the Google Reader’s link management very useful. Blogs are good for communication of ideas, and I like getting feedback from classmates on postings I have done.
Having a good organizational structure for bookmarks is also important. I have been using folders to save particular links in My Favorites, and I have found them quickly when I wanted to recommend a link or two to a math teacher in our group. I have been a real advocate of online professional development in math, and I attend every professional meeting on math that I can.
The key with all of the tools mentioned above is communication. By having the right tools, it makes being a learner more fulfilling. I did not make a comprehensive list, just the ones that I see as more beneficial.
September 16th, 2007 at 10:36 am
I like your list. I think it’s perfect.
September 16th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
This is a very good list of tools and you put much thought into each explanation. What you said about being the first to have broadband in your neighborhood, made me think of us when they first ran the digital cabel up our way. I was the first to sign up and had to wait until they got it here. I had used it in MOrehead and did not like using dial up when I came home!
I had the same experience with Hotmail and have used Gmail for sometime now. One problem, I can’t seem to access it from school. Have you tried using Igoogle for a homepage? It allows you to put everything from this class on it and then you can put bookmarks for the sites you can’t actually put on the page. I found out about it here from a blog post.
About your browser recommndation, I have seen this “Firefox” now a few times, once on the 100 tools list and on Phaedrus’s tool box, so I am going to look into it.
Organization always helps. I have my favorites all in a row and have the most terrible time locating the one I need. So this is a good one.
Good job on the list and the explanations.
By the way I want to say that this blog looks very organized! I was in here reading one day and noticed that you had everything in catagories so I went into mine and organized them.
Gracias for the inspiration!
September 16th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
You are very welcome. I was just playing one day and realized that I could make categories. I used to be notorious for having my favorites look like a long list, no folders, and I got tired of hunting all the time for the good stuff.
I am going to look at the Igoogle this afternoon and see how it does. I have a feeling that it will be top notch just like all the other Google products. Thanks for the suggestion.