Google Documents- First, I felt like this site was very easy to navigate, provided an easy interface to share documents with others, was set up to easily create new documents change uploaded ones. It was very fast and easy to upload documents, even fairly large documents. I was impressed by the variety of file types that could be shared, but disappointed that Adobe Illustrator files were not among the choices. I’m sure that wasn’t the intent when the site was set up, so we’ll bypass that complaint. I think this would be a great site for teachers within a department (high school math for instance) to post their projects, documents, and worksheets to share with the department. I also think that for any individual it would be a great place to back-up files without having to buy an external hard drive or worry about misplacing a CD or flash drive. I was very impressed by the ease in navigating through the site and being able to find things, change things, and even change settings so quickly. Lastly, I was HIGHLY impressed by the “form” creation tool and have already used this tool to set up an evaluation form. Google documents gives you a web address that takes you directly to your form, so it can be easily linked to a website. This is a great tool for opinion surveys, potential assessments, or even extra credit. Once someone has submitted the form, the results (answers) are put into a spreadsheet that is very easy to read and use. My only complaint is that I have not been able to find a way to edit the form blank after someone has already posted on the previous blank. Hopefully we’ll be able to solve this problem, but not being able to edit it would be a potential flaw. Other than that, I can see many great uses for sharing documents, backing things up, and storing items to recall later, and therefore I would definitely recommend this site to my colleagues for use in their departments or their classes.
Picnik- As I mentioned before, I am not really a photo person, but I was impressed! I like Adobe Photoshop because of the variety of tools that are readily available and in my job I have to do a lot of image editing for documents, brochures, and presentations so some of those tools are necessary. However, picnik did a really good job setting up some of those very basic tools in a user-friendly format that was easy to navigate, understand, and use. This would be a great tool for some basic photo editing, especially in the schools. For professional work, it’s probably not the best choice and you “get what you pay for”, but it’s definitely quality enough for an educational environment. I liked the “create” function a lot. It seemed to allow a lot of creativity in borders, shapes, adding icons to the photo, and styles of photo being created. The cropping, red-eye reduction, rotating/ flipping tools, and basic contrasting tools were very simple to use, were effective, and produced some quality photos. There are a lot of basic tools available at the click of a button, making it a great tool for use in a classroom setting. Not to mention, for a class or school with a tight budget, this freeware will do the job!
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