MuseForJews

Test, test, test

So my 6th graders are finishing up their Discovery 2012 projects. We gave them lots of time in February to research the topic of their choice and then they prepare a final project in whatever medium they choose. So the computer lab becomes a little chaotic…with kids making movies, creating Keynote presentations, writing books and creating wikis.

This time I had one young man who created a timeline using Timeliner. I see that there’s a new “multimedia-rich” version, but, alas, that’s not the version we have. I wanted something a little flashier for him, so I had the bright idea for him to recreate it using an online timeline website. So I did the unforgivable: I did a search for online timeline and jumped into having him use Dipity.com to create his timeline. Without testing it first.

What a disaster. For one thing, I’ve had few websites that load as slowly as this one, which often led to him wasting class time waiting to get in. And now that he’s done, and we’re getting ready to share our projects at parent/teacher conferences, I’ve had numerous problems getting in. I keep getting some internal server error. Oy.

A disaster.

Thank goodness I have that old, boring, Timeliner version saved. And hopefully I’m upgrading to the new one for next year.

And no more jumping into using a website with a student without testing, testing, testing.

March 14, 2012 - Posted by Tktchr | Just sayin', Thinking | educational technology, Technology