Tonight was quite the whirlwind - we tried to cover playing with lots of academic software, in six different stations - a pixel's worth of what really is out there - both for free and at cost.
Understanding that there are different categories of software is important, though it's far more important to be aware of what is out there, so that by the time you have your own classroom, or means to put technology in your classroom, you want to know how to go about making choices for software that will definitely help you improve your teaching and lesson effectiveness.
By far, Academic software is more fun and exciting to play with. Recording keeping - the stuff of Administrative software can sometime be used for Academic purposes, but still doesn't hold the charm and pizazz of even some of the free Academic titles out there such as Tux Paint, Google Earth, Stellarium, or LinCity.
Each of these software titles has some type of for-cost relative. Your decisions on what you use in your own classroom will in large part depend on your familiarity with technology, your willingness to learn something new, and what exists at the time of your initiation as a classroom teacher. Much is and has changed in the way of software development that takes the Mac/PC specification out of the equation and puts it squarely on the shoulders of the browser and related plug-ins you do or do not have. That - we'll discover and discuss in the coming week(s):
One thing of note, we'll be doing course evaluations in two weeks, and this semester they'll be in Blackboard!
