Tech Session day 2

Today was more of an exploration day. First, we shared in small groups how we integrated the learning from the last session. People that presented did a nice job.

Then we looked at some new material. Craig and I focused on making web pages, especially looking at different ways to do this. I have always used "First Class" for this, but it seems very limited in terms of how it looks, and what content it has. On the up side, it is very easy to make entries, and there are no problems with putting it on a server. 

Id like to try a new way. Google sites seems great, but I;m not sure that our school will allow access to it. I will also look at the others listed on the conference web page (which I have bookmarked, because it has great info on it - go ahead and click below)

http://sites.google.com/site/techintadvanced/

I looked at other options including "Edicy", "Sauropol", "Snappages", "Soup", "Sprout", "Webon", "Synthasite",  "Weely", and "Wix". 

These were all roughly the same idea - you register and can do fairly small sites for free, with the option to pay to upgrade. I have to research them further to see if any of them make the posting step easy and painless. I also have to check to see which of them can handle audio files, which is an important requirement for me.

I like "IWeb", but there will be issues regarding posting - it requires getting on to the school servers, which means getting outside help from the tech people.

Overall, I still think a website would serve my needs better than the "Portaportal" that I examined in session one. I can post more information for kids, and still list the same useful links that  I put up in "Portaportal".

Learning about Portaportal

For my activity in the tech session, I chose to learn about Portaportal, which is a bookmarking site that students can log in to to see a collection of bookmarks that I have chosen for them.

I separated the page into two sections; the first was for my jazz band, which contained a link to an online jazz improvisation course. The second is a section where all band students can find some links to online recordings of band pieces that we are currently working on in class.

My colleague Craig, also made a portaportal page with similar music links for his students. We were both able to log into each other's sites and were able to view the links and hear the recordings.

Maintenance of my site would require adding more links, especially adding links of new recordings as we add to our class repertoire. I would consider leaving the old recordings on the page, maybe in an "old music" section, because many times kids like to go back and listen to music that they performed another semester or year.