Aside from Blogger very stubbornly and inexplicably italicizing several of my posts, this was a very enjoyable journey. Looking back, probably my favorite discovery was from the screencasting portion, in which I discovered the free software Wink for creating Flash-based tutorials. Too cool! I definitely hope to start putting this to work soon, and will at some point be giving the browser-based screencasting offerings a shot as well.
While nothing surprised me terribly much, I really liked the organization of the course and how it showed me such a diverse array of tools, many of them free. I appreciated the use of the blog as a way of capturing my reflections through the steps and the exercises involved in each. I would definitely be interested in another discovery program like this one in the future.
I think the only drawbacks to so many free tools — and this is just an issue in general not specific to this course — is the constant need for creating new accounts and thus remembering usernames and passwords. Google has so many great and free products that I tried to really get as much out of my Google Account as I could (also a beneficial exploration in itself) before venturing to other outside products.
In terms of improving the program's format or concept, as I mentioned, I would just ask that you periodically review the content you point us toward to ensure its timeliness and relevance. Overall, the course did a great job of using recent examples and readings, which I greatly appreciated, but there are occasional instances when a reading or video felt somewhat dated, even if it was just from a few years ago. Technology changes so quickly. Just from my own experience Step #2, the customizable start pages, felt weirdly clunky and old-fashioned, as if we've moved on from such things. The rest, however, was spot-on. Thanks for putting the course together.
Photo by The Intrepid Traveler available through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
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