Website

I've made a classroom website.  Problem is, I don't have a classroom to make a website for.  Therefore, I've made a website that looks like it's for a classroom.  I had to use some generic information.  My personal phone and email are on the contact me page for now, it will become my school phone and email when I have one.  I have an announcements page to keep everyone up to date on the goings on of the class, a homework page for students who missed class or just forgot the assignment.  I have a documents page set up, but there's nothing in it now.  It would be for putting homework worksheets or important forms for the students (permission slips, etc.)  There's a bio page with a little bit about me, that'll still need some work, and a links page with a couple of generally useful links.  This can grow when I have an actual class to teach, as then I would know more specifically what would be useful for those students.

Screencast

I created this screencast as a guide to my blog.  It's something that could be shown to students at the beginning of the year to familiarize them with the blog, and what it's purpose will be.  Obviously, I would not be using this particular screencast, as it is of this blog, which does not have the proper content.  The idea would be basically the same, though.  The screencast also has a a bit of a introduction to my delicious page, so it works as a tutorial for that as well.  Sorry about the massive size, I suppose in the future I would want to either make my browser smaller and only capture that part of the screen, or edit the size of the video in some video editing software.  I just didn't think I could get the video downloaded from screencast.com to my computer, edited, and uploaded back in a place I could embed from.  That's something I'll have to explore.  Also, apparently my mouse's batteries are low :).

Online photo editor review

Reviewing a online photo editor is much harder for me than an office suite because, despite how much I like to say I'm a bit of a geek, I've never used a real photo editing program (no, MS paint does not count).  The extent to which I've ever edited a photo is to reduce its size and file size for use as an avatar, most recently for my picture on the e-learn site for this class, actually.  Thus, my choice of which editor to review came down to which name I like the most, and that was Sumo Paint.
Being not at all familiar with photo editing software, it seemed pretty easy to use. One click from the home page and I had the program running, and very shortly thereafter I had a picture up to edit.  (It took me a bit longer because I have pretty much zero pictures on the laptop from which I do most of my classwork, so I had to go download one from Facebook.)  All the tools that I could imagine ever needing were open in front of me right away.  The only thing I had to look for was the picture re-size tool, but it was right where I expected it to be in the "image" drop down menu.  It actually felt a bit like Microsoft Paint, which I find as a plus for people who might be resistant to using new software and enjoy familiarity.  I was easily able to find tools to add text or drawings, and to choose and alter the color of those things.
I'm not sure that Sumo Paint has some of the more powerful tools that serious photo editors might want.  To be honest with you I don't know exactly what those are, but the fact that I had a good idea what pretty much everything I saw could do tells me that it wasn't very serious stuff.  It does appear that there is a paid upgrade, which I imagine is the full-featured version of the software. Since the point of this review is to analyze it as a free alternative, I'll leave that out.
In all, I think that Sumo Paint could fill any needs I could ever think of for my own photo editing, and also any I could think of for a colleague or student, with the exception of possibly some more involved photography or art teachers/students who need more powerful software.

Online office suite review

Although I knew about Google Docs, I didn't realize there were other online office suites out there, or the level of functionality that they had.  After tinkering with a few, I decided to look mostly at ThinkFree.  I found both some positive and negatives about it, but I think all around it is something I would consider using should the opportunity present itself.
I was a bit skeptical about using online office suites to start, mostly due to the fact that there is less security of the document when it exists "in the cloud" rather than on your own computer or the school's server.  This is not important for most things, sensitive student information could possibly be compromised.  You can have all the secure connections and private settings you want, but saving a document to a server somewhere out in internet land automatically means that someone else could get to it if they wanted to.  Thus, the types of documents created and saved on this should be selective.
My second impression was also pretty poor, as the Java application took an extremely long time to load the first time I opened the document writer.  I took the time I was waiting to browse some other areas of the site, and it did say that the first time you run the program it might be slow, but should speed up after that.  This was pretty much the case.  Also, it took me 3 tries each to get the spreadsheet and slide show editors to open properly, but they did eventually work just fine.  To be fair, I did this on my outdated laptop (probably 7 years old, and not very powerful), but this is probably closer to the equipment many schools are using than something more modern, so the I believe the point still holds.
The main thing I love about ThinkFree is that their editors look and function almost exactly like Microsoft Office 2003.  This can help get over many colleagues reluctance to change, as they will already be familiar and comfortable with the layout and features.  This can also help with getting students to use it, taking away one more thing that they could find to complain about it, as they most likely will have seen or used at least Microsoft Word, and quite possibly the 2003 version or the version prior (XP?), both of which are pretty much the same.
I also thought it was great how you could, by simply putting in email addresses, allow for others to view the file or to collaborate on it.  This could work similarly to wikis in allowing students to collaborate on a project from their own homes.  Alternatively to share the document, it can be published, which gives it a unique URL that can be linked to anyone who needs to see it (instead of attaching to an email, perhaps you give the URL).  This would make it easy to share documents with students, or for students to work on a document at home or at school, and be able to pick up where they left off without having to remember to save it to a flash drive or email it to themselves (and then try to get around the school's network protections to download it).  By giving the teacher permission to view the document, they wouldn't even have to print it off to turn it in, preventing the possibility of losing the assignment and allowing students without printers or with printer or ink or paper issues to circumvent those problems.
Overall, I think that ThinkFree is a great alternative to the cost of licensing an office suite for a school district, and a great tool to give some flexibility to both teachers and students in the way that they share documents, although care must be given for more sensitive information, which I believe should still be kept local (OpenOffice, anyone?)