8 Technology Tools

Moodle  (5/5)
I think that Moodle is a great tool to use, especially in college. It is a way for students and professors to communicate and interact without having to use e-mail. However, it sends messages to your e-mail to confirm the assignment you have done and submitted and when a professor sends a message for the course. In addition, it provides a calendar for all the upcoming quizzes, tests, assignments, and our favorite, holidays. It shows the upcoming activities that will be done in class.
It is also beneficial for the professors because they can post up the syllabus for the course and not have to print one (especially for the professors that love to save paper). They do not need to send or print documents, individually to students, needed for the class and instead just post them online. They can also upload the grades of assignments and tests of the students so that the students do not have to go to their professor to find out their grades, unless they want to know why they got the grade. I personally believe that Moodle has been a big help to college students around the University of Guam campus.

Google Chrome(5/5)
Google Chrome has always been my favorite browser. It is fast and easy to use. Using Chrome, you can bookmark the pages you want to save for future references. When you open it, it shows the websites that you frequently use, so you do not have to type the URL over again. One thing that I most admire about it is that it is fast. Using it in a classroom, it would not waste a lot of time trying to load websites, videos, and other things.

Google Applications(5/5)
I have always used Hotmail for word, presentations, and other helpful things for class, but I did not know how useful Google is with their Google Applications. First of all, I thought that the interactive documents were cool and useful. There is no need to send information to each other, to copy and paste information from each other, and to ask other group mates what research or other things for the group they have done. The Blogger is a great way to blog things, especially important opinions that could be used in cases, such as Livetext. It is great when personalizing the things you want to say and is a great multimedia tool, which I am still getting the hang of. My most favorite Google App is the Google Hangouts because it is easy to use and there is an actual app you can connect to it with your e-mail other than logging in all the time.

Live Binder (5/5)
I will admit that Live Binder was a bit complicated considering that it was not familiar to me. But as I started to look through it and Dr. Cyrus explained it a bit more, I kind of got the hang of it. Using it as a future educator is a great way to keep track of great websites to gather information. It also can be a portfolio of all the websites we students have created. We can clash other websites we used in this class, such as Wix, Weebly, Prezi, and our Blogger to keep track of other classes.

Wiggio(3/5)
Using Wiggio for our presentation was okay. There were ways to create conferences and to chat about our project. However, every time we sent a message in the chat, we would get a message to our personal e-mail about what that person said, when we could just read it from the website. There was a way to turn that off, but you have to play with it and it did not have a tutorial on how to use it. Also, when creating the conferences, there were so many steps as to creating one, such as inputting all the members e-mail, having them approve, and so on. During the video conference, we had to go to another link to see our group mates and we have to click on whether we want that person to see us or not and hear us, which would be easier if it were automatic. It was great because using Wiggio, we can send files to groups, which would be great for classrooms and can update students on what their conference would be about.

Wix (5/5)
Wix is a great tool for creating a website. The first time I saw it, it was used for one of the games and what caught my attention was how the background was able to relate to their game. It would be great to use it in a classroom because it will forever stay online and you could still edit it, which would be great if a few information needs to be changed.

Weebly (5/5)
Weebly is another tool in creating websites, but was only okay. I had a hard time trying to change the layouts for my website. Another issue I had was that there was a limited amount of layouts and adding pictures. In order to add a picture, you had to have paid for the better picture, otherwise you would have to use pictures that sometimes do not relate to what was searched or one that looks old and out dated. It was also difficult because when I would type something in a textbox, it would go back to the example in the textbox, other than what I types. However, you can also edit the website after you have published it, which would give teachers a chance to update their information as well.

Prezi (5/5)
Prezi is a great alternative tool to using PowerPoint presentation. It has great ways to present different topics with different layouts. However, using it in a classroom, it may take some time as slides try to transmission. If your internet connect is slow, it may disrupt the presentation of students or yours. A great thing about Prezi is that it in online, so if your computer breaks down, it would still be available online. It gives me a headache sometimes because of the transitions it makes. To go to another slide, you would have to keep pressing back, other than stopping it to go to a certain slide.