Plan B and C and… August 7, 2009
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Tools.trackback
I had the pleasure to present a few Web 2.0 tools to a group of Socials Studies teachers today, intending to use a ‘Jog the Web’ collection that a colleague of mine put together. Everything looked great. The accompanying wiki was set up, links to a PowerPoint they can download and use if they want, and links to two ‘Jog the Webs’. 5 minutes before the presentation everything was working just fine. 5 minutes into the presentation and Jog the Web stopped responding. Nothing. Checked the network, other pages were loading just fine. What to do? It is kind of hard to have people explore dozens of web 2.0 tools if the links to those tools are not available.
I started bringing up some of the tools I thought were in the collection. We looked at a couple of timeline tools, like xtimeline and Dipity. We talked about YouTube and how to request a teacher override. We checked Delicious, Animoto, and Blaberize. What tools would you show if you were under pressure to present and your original presentation was not going to work?
Maybe Jog the Web will be back up by the time you read this. If not, imagine a great collection of indispensable web 2.0 tools for the Social Studies classroom. So the simple solution would have been to list the links on the wiki as well to have a backup. It was a good reminder to myself to be prepared for problems. If you are committed to using technology, you always need a plan B and C, and…
http://www.jogtheweb.com/run/3wXQ2av1IcZl
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Ahh, I have been there. Yes, you must have back up plans. I have had networks fail me, internet go bye, bye, websites disappear, etc. My motto is to be flexible.