Sharendipity

= What is Sharendipity and how does it work? = media type="youtube" key="Q-mX5w3H9xI" height="315" width="560"

Strengths: Allows students and teachers to create programs, share their programs, and edit other people's programs. There is the ability to be as creative as you want and to work collaboratively and share your work. There are templates created and tools that you or your students can use to create a new applet. The following applet was created by 2convenient combining tools already available. Bonus points will be awarded to anyone who can find the geographic mistake in the applet.

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Weaknesses: A very intense learning curve. The documentation on their wiki looks incomplete. YouTube has less than a handful of files related to Sharendipity. In order to consider using this in a classroom you would need to spend a great deal of lead time learning the software. You would additionally need to give serious thought to how you would teach students how to use the program as what documentation exists is fairly complex. Sharendipity looks like it may be abandoned. The last twitter post was March 2011, the last blog post of December 2009, the homepage February of 2011.

How can this media tool be used in the classroom?

Inquiry: There is room to explore the software, to explore other programs and to try and reach a design goal with an iterative process. Due to the complexity of the software, some of the inquiry will not work as well.

Construction: This is a strength of Sharendipity. Either the teacher or the student can actively create and construct applications. There really is not a limit to what can be created.

Communication: Students can share their application with others in class or throughout the website. They can also share applications using a social media site. Students are able to receive and give feedback from other users.

Expression: Another strength of Sharendipity, students have very little constraint on what they can create. There is a great deal of individual expression possible.