Take the Time to Take a Second Look

In the days and now weeks after ISTE '10, many seem to be looking for the lesson they learned from the conference. For me it seems to not rush into a new tool, but look at possibilities of tools that are already available. My two examples are Cooliris and Edmodo.

Cooliris has been buried in my bookmarks for a long time. I thought it was cool, but never found a purpose for me. Then I saw it again at the conference and how it could be used in presentations. That caught my interest so I went into investigation mode and found it to be a really awesome tool. It is great to view a large amount of images on Flickr or Facebook. The search tool is fantastic and the extension even works in Chrome. I wonder if this will be my new Prezi? More time and some more practice with the tool will answer that question.

I was so excited by Edmodo, a kind of closed social network for education, that I jumped to use it in my classes. It was a FAILED experiement for many different reasons, most of them pointing in my direction. Then I saw the representatives in a small booth in the back of the enormous exhibit hall. BTW, I was very proud of myself because I spent very little time with the vendors. I have to say I was impressed by the improvements since the last time I gave it a try. It inspired me to to reflect on why it failed before to make the second time a success.

While some may take the time to smell the roses, I want to take the time to really look at various tech tools. Old and new.