Technology Petting Zoo

Amy Harris and Lynda Kellam (UNCG) gave attendees an overview of a variety of free, open-source, web-based technologies.

Even though many of the technologies do overlap, Amy and Lynda broke them down into three broad categories: Social Networking, Productivity, and Communication. Participants voted for what they wanted to learn about using Poll Everywhere, which allowed them respond on the poll site or via text message or Twitter. Here's an overview of some of the technologies that were discussed:

Social Networking:

• Ning.com - allows you to create your own social network or join an existing one, wide variety of groups, might be an option for class collaboration (alternative to CMS like Blackboard), doesn't allow upload of documents

• Google Groups - also allows you to create a group, can create list-serv, upload docs, another alternative for class collaboration

• FriendFeed.com - aggregator, puts all your updates and your friends' updates in one place, need to be using multiple social networking tools to make this useful - Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, YouTube, etc., various ways to access - e-mail, feed reader, website

Productivity:

• Rememberthemilk.com - task-based system, go in and create to-do lists for whatever you want, add tags, search by tags or keyword, can download lists in XML for back-up, so robust that can get a little lost

• Evernote.com - note-taking system, both web-based and downloadable for mac, pc, iphone, pre, visible on mobile devices, upgrade to premium (for a fee) for capability to upload other files, such as PDFs, create notebooks that are server-based or computer-based, can share with other ppl

• Google Docs - can create docs, presentations, spreadsheets, forms - not fancy, but they work; add hyperlinks to link to other Google Docs; share with others, invite to view or edit, also publishable to the web or downloadable in other forms (PDF, PPT, etc.)
  

• Google Tasks - view in Google Calendar, can add tasks directly to list from Gmail (under More Actions)

Communication:

• Blogger.com - bloggin platform, owned by Google, so if already have Google account, quick and easy to create blog and invite others to collaborate

• Wordpress.com - blogging platform, need to create separate account, can embed into website, easy to use

• Polleverywhere.com - create polls that update live; audience can vote on poll website, through text messaging (site generates all the numbers), or through Twitter; "poor man's clicker"

There were many other technologies mentioned that we didn't have time to cover, but this session really focused on how these tools can be useful and how different tools suit different people's working, organizational and communication preferences. Get in and find out which one works for you!