If you are interested in saving time when selecting online tools for class, look no further than Tektrekker’s Web 2.0 Selection Criteria. He has identified his criteria as access, usability, privacy and intellectual property, workload and time management, and fun factor. I am going to do a direct copy of his process which is selecting a learning tool from GO2WEB20 after thinking about a learning objective. I want to find something that is fun for people with a disability to play with on the computer and so I think I will explore the categories of games and fun.
I have come across Scrapblog and discovered that it is web based but before I use it I will test it in Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox and see how it works through a Dial-Up connection. I have established that the tool is free through FAQ and it can be used on a PC and a Mac. There is a need to create an account, but nothing needs to be installed or downloaded onto the computer. I check for issues in the forum to see the kinds of problems that I can anticipate if I decide to use it. There is a restricted access option to the work, but it is unclear about the copyright status of the content. There are tagging and comment features so the Scrapblogs can be brought together under one name, and people can leave their comments about their friends’ works (NB: Do a session about constructive comments). There seems to be a fee attached to printing them off, which requires further investigation.
This selection criteria is great. It allows me to make short work of selecting tools and then evaluating them against the list even before starting to experiment with them.
Rattle and Hum 