Freely Given

 Let us take a look at 8 free tools found around the internet that can be used to improve both one's classroom lessons and one's other professional duties. Think meetings and professional development.

FULLFORUMS is a forum generator and host server. I have been on a few forum communities over the decades, and have particular features that I look for. At the start of June, I was looking to set up a new forum for a personal project. Fullforums was the only free creator and host site that offered the features I wanted in their free version. Those tools are sufficient storage to allow the keeping of older threads and posts, a thread searcher, and admin tools that let me set up hidden and limited access rooms.
 

WEEBLY is a website builder and host server. I have tried a couple of different website generators over the years. Weebly is the only one I have been comfortable and interested enough in to actually use it through to publication. The free version provides only the basic elements for a website, but in a relatively intuitive way for the user. I find that if I leave its templates, and try to free style, it can be difficult to align photos exactly as I want on the page. And there is a button in my favorite header style that I have no use for and can never seem to delete. So I always have to change it to the label “not a button” while leaving its link blank. Weebly’s forums are really not worth the trouble, because of the limits that Weebly puts onto the free version, but I work around this by having a page with a forum link in it that can go to an external forum. What attracts to Weebly is the amount of tools and storage you do get for free, and I always seem to find a design or layout that aesthetically matches what I hope for thematically. As a bonus for any business or technology teachers or teachers with projects appropriate for websites, Weebly includes tools for educators to monitor student websites. “Students are provided a simplified area to create and edit their websites at students.weebly.com” (Weebly is the easiest way to create a website, store or blog. (n.d.))

MATH.COM has a number of tools for both teachers and students. Mostly they are small and simple, but they can be a lifesaver for the student who forgot to bring their graphing calculator to class. I have used their Algebra Worksheet Generator before. It was useful for generating more practice problems than my usual worksheets have on them. Coming up with random problems that are solvable and specific to a skill or subset of skills can be very time consuming and often an exercise in futility, when you notice problem 7 did not match the skill-set you wanted your class to work on. This generator saves all of that effort. It is not so good for introducing new concepts, as there is not a place for inserting instructions, examples, or diagrams. But for pure review, why waste time being creative. 

CATPIN is an online bubble sheet generator. As a tool it is a relatively simple concept, but it does have a lot of variety and adaptability with its, admittedly, very narrow area of specialty. I am not a big fan of bubble sheets in education, as I consider them a sign of laziness and of a potentially limited view of the content, but there are times when they are useful. It can be adapted to surveys just as easily as worksheets and tests. The Catpin allows you to save your test in there system, save as a pdf file, or you can print them out directly from the site. All in all it is a very function tool if you are looking for bubbles.  

MOODLE, I am not a fan of thee. It may just be my own personal aesthetics. It seems that every teacher sets up his or her class slightly differently and I inevitably end up making some mistake or missing some key information until after it would have been useful. I am quite comfortable with computers and reading, so this does not happen to me very often….except it was the norm for UoG classes for me. From a couple of years ago, when it was newer to the school, I found it very frustrating. There was no or little formatting in text submissions, which earns a lot of ire from me on work that should look professional. I got so fed up I actually researched it on line to figure out why UoG seemed so enamored of it. At the time there were 3 major companies offering this type of interactivity. Moodle was the cheapest. Even on line, where so many things are free, we still get what we pay for. Coming back to a UoG class that uses Moodle after 2 years, I find it more functional, but my earlier impressions will not fade quickly.  

FIREFOX has been my primary web browser since some time in the 2000-aughts when Explore had yet again another big security hole that they were rushing to find a fix to re-protect. Just a few days ago we had the latest “Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 through 11 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (memory corruption) via a crafted web site, aka ‘Internet Explorer Memory Corruption Vulnerability,’” (Microsoft » Internet Explorer : Security Vulnerabilities. (n.d.) I understand that these are not Explorer’s fault, because the more ubiquitous the software (or hardware) and more internet-connecting it is, the more it is targeted by hackers and criminals. They are just playing the numbers game. I came to appreciate the spartan speed and simplicity of the vanilla Firefox, as well as finding different add-ons to personalize its use without the clutter that Microsoft products inevitably collect. Still all of this said, I suspect that I am going to need to consider parting ways from Firefox in the next decade as its ascendancy will attract more and more of the criminal elements that forced me away from Explorer. 

GOOGLE’s suite of APPS is quite an ambitious one stop shopping tool for communication software, like Kmart is for retail. And, just like Kmart, it has some questionable quality issues. Do not get me wrong, everything functions, unlike at Kmart. But almost everything feels like the simpler, free version of much more advanced software. Google’s suite of Apps is saved by four significant factors. First, it is free. That is hard to beat. Second, it does have more social media and communication tools all smoothly integrated with each other than any other software publisher I am aware of. Microsoft Office Suite has the communication tools bundled just as smoothly, but lacks the social media tools. Third, that smooth integration is extend in an additional dimension by Google Drive being highly sharable in real time with anyone else who has a free G-mail account. And fourth, it has opened up its code enough to allow 3^rd-party developers to design support apps and tools. This last fact is the most significant in making the Google Apps appealing. The add-ons in Google Drive allow it adapt and compensate for its simplicity, allowing it to be considered as a valid replacement for Office even for those who have access to the (clearly) higher quality Office. Still it has a number of negatives unavoidably attached to it as well. It is an online tool, and so is dependent on bandwidth and connection speeds. Yes, many of its core apps can be run in an “off-line” mode, but when trying with Google Drive’s Docs, it was awkward to use and I was nervous about keeping my data if anything happened to the web browser. Another negative is that many of those redeeming apps request access to information and data. This raises a number of privacy and security red flags for those of us who are a bit more aware of the possibilities for their abuse. 

LIVERBINDERS is a tool that I have encountered before. However, it had always been encountered in viewing other’s work. This was the first time I had used it for my own purposes. My reaction was quite different from the other side of the tool. In my earlier exposures, it had struck me as essentially a cheap and low tech-skilled alternative to setting up an actual website. I suspect that that impression was in part due to the users use of it. Having worked with it myself now, I have a different opinion of it. I have come to appreciate using it in two specific ways. First, it is a convenient central-organizing tool for any project involving multiple online resources. Used this way it is only slightly better than a well organized collection of “favorites” folders. The folders are faster, but Liverbinders gets the edge, because of the ability to preview the site or media involved. The second part I like about it is that its style matches my presentational style better than Powerpoint or Emaze. I have little interest in bullet-points and spending time on flashy special effects. I prefer to use the media to support and supplement the quality of the content I am speaking on. Its purpose is to show or present those parts of the topic that I cannot deliver with my voice. Livebinders lets me set up this type of supporting media for a presentation quickly; in just a few minutes if it involves elements I have used before and have saved.  There are two major drawbacks. It is slow to load tabs. This can be partially gotten around by “warming up” the tabs by pre-visiting them and letting them load before they are needed. The other negative is that it is an online tool, and so is dependent on bandwidth and connection speeds. 

References

Microsoft » Internet Explorer : Security Vulnerabilities. (n.d.). Retrieved June 29, 2015, from http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-26/product_id-9900/Microsoft-Internet-Explorer.html

Weebly is the easiest way to create a website, store or blog. (n.d.). Retrieved June 29, 2015, from http://www.weebly.com/weebly/userHome.php?page=education