8 Free Technologies

Welcome to the new blog site!
I'm hoping to do weekly updates on how to use technology in online education; however, I will use the disclaimer that this will be published "when you least suspect it!"

The nature of this site will be to share strategies and observations for using technology in the support of online and hybrid courses. The site will discuss pedagogy, instructional design, technology management, and assessment design. It will also showcase some super-cool, or super-cheap (eh... FREE!) technologies that students and faculty can use for creating and posting content.

Eight FREE technologies

What price is better than free? Here are eight technologies that you and your students might explore.

• www.blogger.com - this site. Create and manage your own blog.
• www.youtube.com - Upload and view videos online. Recently purchased by GOOGLE (Oct. 06), and utilizes a very simple interface for new users.
• www.google.com/intl/en/options/ - Google provides FREE online document and spreadsheet applications; these are great for group projects in which all users can edit the same source material (and there are saved revisions, in case a poorly made edit deletes important content).
• www.sourceforge.net - Look for AUDACITY (multi-track audio editing to create your own music) and GIMP (PhotoShop clone). Sourceforge.net is a site featuring OPEN SOURCE software - which is software that is free and editable. Some is junk, some is great, but Audacity and Gimp are AWESOME!
• www.skype.com - free voice over IP and voice-conferencing software. Modest expense if you wish to dial to land-lines.
• www.openoffice.org - free business productivity suite that is a virtual clone of Microsoft Office (even allows you to read/save in Microsoft file formats).
• www.mozilla.org - free, open source Internet browser FIREFOX allows "extensions" that greatly enhance the abilities of the browser. Extensions include programming and testing, calculators and utilities, page editing, RSS feeds, etc. Too many categories to mention here. Also check out SeaMonkey - which is a new browser, email client, and web page editor suite.
• www.flickr.com - Allows you to upload and edit photos plus link to them from other pages (like your blog).

Thanks,

James