Where is this going?

One of the common excuses for not embracing emergent technology is cost. With the current fiscal and political climate, I'm sure this will not change. I'm also sure this isn't exclusive to libraries -- or even to education.

At my last librarian meeting, I talked about Camtasia only to have several librarians talk about how their school wouldn't give them the money for a single-user license. I was also bragging about Endnote to my Dean when she mentioned that her big issue with it was cost.

The research I have done for this class has certainly informed my Capstone project -- I am going to create a one-hour for-credit information literacy course that can be delivered online. However, I'm going to attempt to create it using only free software. I've set-up a blog to document my progress and discuss the free software itself. I'm hoping that the information will encourage people to take advantage of what the web has to offer.

These are the tools I hope to explore and maybe utilize:

• Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/): Audio recording and editing
• CamStudio (http://camstudio.org/): Video creation
• Delicious (http://delicious.com/): Link organization
• Free Online Surveys (http://freeonlinesurveys.com/): Online surveys
• Google (http://www.google.com/): Web mail, photo hosting, document writing/sharing, blog software, video hosting
• KeePass (http://keepass.info/): Password organization and protection
• Meebo (http://www.meebo.com/): Chat client; can be embedded
• Open Office (http://openoffice.org/): Office suite
• PB Wiki (http://pbwiki.com/): Wiki/webpage development and hosting
• Survey Monkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/): Online surveys
• Teacher Tube (http://www.teachertube.com/): Video hosting
• Webinaria (http://www.webinaria.com/): Video creation
• Windows Live(http://home.live.com/): Web mail, document writing/sharing, blog software, file hosting
• Zotero (http://www.zotero.org/): Research and reference organization (like Endnote)