Thing 7 continued

I watched a previously taped broadcast on using a google customized search engine. I wasn't able to watch a live one at this time because of my schedule so I watched this one to see how it worked. I liked the idea of the using the customized search engine because it seems like a good way to manage bookmarks to only search within favorite web sites. This would work well if you have a number of sites you check frequently. As far as watching a video conference I like that you can see what the person is doing on your computer so that you can see exactly where they are going. Presumably if this demonstration was live the instructor would likely give the learners time to try or set up some of the things they are teaching at the same time. I was asked to take a couple of these earlier this year for a survey and a design tool however the times did not fit in with my schedule and I thought that the set up was a little too difficult for my area. The one that had a phone connection I believe would have been a long distance call which I did not think the school would appreciate paying for an hour long long distance call to watch one of these. The other problem with some of these is that you may have to download some software and not all schools have easy access to or want you to download software that is not used normally in your teaching day. One thing I thought would be nice is that set up of the one that I watched I didn't have to download anything but as I watched I could see exactly where the person was telling you to click and something like that as a tutorial for students on searching the internet or using word/power point if they missed the assignment. The only thing I wished it would have had was a pause button so I could pause the presentation and try out what was being taught.