While selecting web-based applications to use in our courses, there are some issues that we should be aware of. We already saw some privacy and safety aspects of this, so now let's have a look at some other aspects of it.
- Ownership and licensing: The ownership of the works that we make available online should remain ours. With regard to licensing, the company that manages the web application has the right to distribute our work (of course, this makes sense). The license that we provide to them shouldn't be too unrestricted, though. Always check the Terms of Service for this. There should also be tools to enable us, as authors, to attach a license to our works (as is the case with Flickr).
- Formats: Services that use PNG, JPEG, Flash Video, MPEG-4, MP3, and all of the open web standards should be acceptable (HTML, XML, and RSS).
- Offline backup: All the services should have a backup facility, or facilitate this in some way, especially if editing is performed online (as is the case with online video subtitling). If it's about sending our own files, we should always keep a copy on our computer or another media.
- The level of activity of the community and development team: High levels of participation both from the participants of the community and the development team (for example, check the company's blogs) is usually a good sign. And of course, a larger community exponentially increases the number of potential relationships.
Never forget to read the Terms of Service of a web application or community before joining it. This is particularly true while working with students, as some applications and communities can also have age restrictions attached to them.
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