Thing 7

Of all of the Things that we have explored thus far, I feel I am most familiar with this area of Web 2.0 communication tools. Though I've used nearly all of the tools at some time in the past, many are not ones that I use in an ongoing way.

Regarding e-mail, teachers in our district lean more and more on this tool. I find it great for communicating with parents, because it allows me to respond to parent emails without the immediacy of a one-on -one conversation. It also helps me formulate a careful answer, and allows a paper trail when needed for tracking an ongoing issue or concern. Another advantage is that you can quickly send an email to an entire group at once. There are times where I do prefer a phone call, as it can be quicker for certain types of communication.

I am not a big user of other tools such as IM and text messaging. Though many think it is so wonderful, I find it much more time consuming than a phone call. A text message can have an advantage of communicating without a substantial interruption, and my daughter claims that there are just some times when a short text is all you want/need to say to a person!

I attended the Minitex webinar called "Proquest Newsstand Complete." I thought it had great info for introducing the Proquest database. I had used this resource when I was working on a Master's thesis, and I would have benefited from some of this info. I found the indexing at the right side was very helpful, as it allows you to move quickly to the next section if you feel comfortable with the info you are watching.