Peer review: Phoebe

Phoebe is a prototype online tool designed to encourage teachers in colleges and universities to explore new approaches and tools in their pedagogy.

So far, it has proved very useful in reminding me how to clearly structure and plan a training session in minute detail. It also allows you to make notes on the session aftewards, indicating aspects that went well, and those that went less well.

I can't find a way to print out my plan yet. I like to do this as I often use my lesson plan as a support document whilst I'm training. However the formatting is also slightly limited - I have started using little icons to represent the different kinds of methods I'm using for each part of a session, and lots of colour but at the moment it doesn't support this. In other words my criticisms are similar to those of mind-mapping tools.

So far I haven't found it very helpful in exploring new approaches. I don't find looking at a list of tools and then ideas on how to use them very useful as it seems like a cart before the horse approach.

There is a section which discussed approaches and how different activities and tools might support them, however it did not inspire me. If the ideas were tied to videos showing tools in practice in real situations, I might be more excited and confident to try them.