Scribd

I used to teach several computer classes in the course of a normal week.  That's not the case any more - I teach a few each year, but not very often.  I've written before about handouts and instruction styles, but today I wanted to mention a tech tool called Scribd. 

All of the instructional handouts I've created over the years are uploaded to my Scribd account, and all are fully available and downloadable for anyone to use.  I upload them from MS Word 2007, and Scribd re-formats them for displaying on their web site.  The formatting is weird sometimes - underlining and tabbing don't always turn out like the original.  That's one of the two complaints I have about Scribd.  The other is that you have to have your own account with Scribd in order to download or embed other peoples' files. In the past I have provided a link to class handouts to the students, but in beginner classes they are unlikely to set up an account in order to download the file.  It would be great if they could just go to the link and click on "print" or "save," but it's more complicated than that.  Google Docs definitely has the upper hand in this area!

But...for the purposes of sharing curriculum and handout ideas with teachers and librarians, Scribd works pretty well.  Documents can be download as PDF, Word, or TXT files.  You can provide direct links like http://www.scribd.com/hhibner or http://www.scribd.com/doc/6465232/Internet (the first goes to my account, so you can see all of the documents available and the second goes to a specific "Internet Basics" document.)

Even if you're not into sharing files, you can search Scribd for documents that might help you do your job in some way.  There are lots of papers, articles, handouts, diagrams, and the like available!  They do encourage you to share files if you're going to download them from other people, but it isn't a requirement.

You can also set your files to "private," making Scribd an option for cloud storage of a few of your prescious files.  I have several documents in my account marked private.  Some need updating and some are just "super-backup-I'm-paranoid" copies of things on my hard drive.  Again, they encourage you to share something with the Scribd community.

There you have it - my tech tool of the week!