Monday, March 21, 2011

Awesome things you can do online for free

Late last semester (or perhaps during the week after winter break) my team discussed what workshops we should give this semester. I'd already done a PDF workshop (at the end of last year and a variation last semester) and no one was volunteering to do something that first block, so I volunteered to give a workshop along the lines of "Awesome things you can do online for free" about web 2.0 services and other stuff that can make life easier. TO shake things up (and instead of printing a handout) I created a PROWL site to organize the presentation and link to the sites and services. I used it in my presentation and tailored the presentation to the interests of the group in attendance.
It's been interesting to try and go back and find links I've used before and I'm really disappointed that facebook bought drop.io and shut them down to integrate parts. drop.io was a really useful service for many, many things.

Lessons learned:

  • If you plan too much content, of course you won't present it all. 
    • But that's not necessarily a bad thing. I had more than I could present, but, I was able to present something interesting for everyone there.
  •  You can over-prepare. I'm not sure how long I spent practicing, organizing my sources and setting up the equipment ahead of time, but if no one had shown up (as occasionally happens around here), it would have been a shame I had spent all that time preparing. 
  • Moodle is not best suited for a descriptive link repository. 

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