Here goes nuthin'

As our first exposure to additional technology to use in education I've now seen Delicious, Twitter, and Bitstrips.

Twitter I had some awareness of already, just no interest in. What, exactly, am I supposed to communicate in such short pieces?

 Delicious strikes me as an interesting tool...for someone else. It would make organizing and sharing of linked resources easier and available anywhere with internet. However, not everywhere has internet access. Not everyone has access. This tool might help me share with other educators, but most of my students would not be able to get to the information outside school. Even inside school, I don't have access to computers all the time. Due to school rules, students can't use their phones. Likely, even if students could, I wouldn't, just because of the distractions.

As for bitstrips...no. Just...no. I can see how someone else would use it. Easily created graphics and such, images which are readily shared. If I wanted to do that I could put together the image I want in an actual image program and then just share/email/post it. I realize that not everyone, or even most, would find something like bitstrips to take actually longer, but I do. So, for someone else.

I could overcome my own lack of interest in the tools and make the changes necessary to make them part of my instruction. I've already learned multiple hardware and software tools because that's what I had available (promethian, for example). But in this case, I would be learning it for some future teaching role. The school I am in now, with the students I have now, the necessary technology supports just aren't there to make these a good use of time and effort right now. We could find workarounds, ways past, or alternatives. In the same amount of time and effort I could focus on tailoring my instruction, streamlining lab procedure (or even getting all the stuff I need for really good labs), or any number of things which would give more immediate results. Which doesn't change that I'll do my best with the new resources. For one, the class requires it. However, knowledge and skill is never useless in the long run.

I just don't know what I'll do with it yet.