for this week's assignment, I decided to random;y "google" the term "free photo and and Media Sharing" and selected a service called ZooLoo. Signing up was the easy part, but one soon finds the site to be a little convoluted. They seem to want to have connectivity to everything else. This could be a good thing since it allows one to share posted between sites, and can even send a Twitter message when a new image or posting is made. Definitely a plus for the diehard web 2.0 aficionados. For educational use though, I think the myriad of options and related instructions required would make it more troublesome than useful (unless it was a class about web2.0 perhaps)
Uploading and annotating image posts is rather straightforward, and I had no problem at all getting a picture in there. Once you have more than one, it allows you to categorize them into "albums" any way you choose.
The service also provides a dashboard with Google searching, RSS feeds, weather, news and other widgets you can customize ( like I said, they want to be the all-in-one)
don't get me wrong though, I do sort of like this approach since in a previous post I referenced an article that presented the notion there being too much out there to keep track of. ZooLoo has taken some broad steps to not just be a image presentation site, but to become a user's homepage with interaction many of the popular web 2.0 utilities. I plan to spend more time there (because I want to), so may have an addendum to this posting.
you can see my "site here
some additional thoughts...
mulling it over, I do think that, with a good integration in lesson-planning, this site could be useful for education since it does provide a sort of "portal" to several tools. From this central location, a class can share media, link to a facebook site, twitter one another, and custom links to a bookmarking site can also be added. The portal can also support RSS content, so students could personalize their own "class portal" page.
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Thanks for the feedback Brian - You're right on with what we're trying to make ZooLoo become - a place for you to access what matters to you most (the dashboard), and a place that makes it simple for you to publish to your own domain.
ReplyDeleteI'd recommend checking out the ZooLoo Share Button. You can grab it from your home page and drag it up to your browser's tool bar. The Share button allows you to post directly to your ZooLoo Site without ever leaving the site your on. It's really cool with a site like Flickr too
Hey Brian --
ReplyDeleteinteresting that they got right back to you. Pretty good review .. do you see this site being useful for a class or a school? Would you recommend it to others for education or training.
A lot of these sites are in permanent beta as they try and find the right mix of features and users. Its a tough road.