The Collaborators

This site costs, so it is not as preferable as Moodle if a school/teacher was looking at free or low cost resources for monitoring progress.

An association dedicated to promoting and supporting the use of diverse technologies (including Podcasts) in education.

A site with standards devoted to teaching teachers how to Podcast.

An article about a teacher who uses Podcasting religiously in his classroom. Students record themselves reviewing what they have learned. Students' motivation stems from the fact that their teacher shows how many people have listened to their Podcast (all 50 states and several countries have listened).

BECTA is the U.K. government funded agency responsible for technology in schools and colleges

Here is an organisation that includes the latest research in technology from the U.K., plus lots of ideas for resources and implemetation. It could be very useful as a site to go to to do some in-depth research on technology tools.

An article about 5th graders creating Podcasts in Spanish. Students met during their lunch period to Podcast in Spanish and found great success!

The history behind ning. VERY interesting for understanding the motivation and reasoning behind this social networking source.

The Collaborators--Jeff, Fiona, Katy and Shawn--practice using the social networking site ning. Check out what we have done :)

"A social network for distance learning professionals", which discusses how to use ning in distance learning and hybrid teaching situations. A valuable resource for thing about how ning can be used to support learning outside of the regular day classroom

The University of Florida's Center for Instructional Technology and Training breaks down what is a ning and discusses how it can be used. Examples and How to Get Started are provided.

This PDF explains the difference between purely "social" social networking sites (like Facebook and Myspace) and ning, which has been opened up to student use for the purpose of educational collaboration. This PDF is written for the teacher, and explains acceptable use and critical issues, such as no advertising, creating restricted use, controlling chat and discussion forums, and how to use feature controls. Additionally, it explains how to articulate communication expectations for students.

This is a great place to start if you are interested in joining a ning whose sole purpose is to discuss, share and collaborate about how to best implement 2.0 and social media technologies like ning in the class. Their intro welcomes "beginners".

This video clearly explains how to create your own ning network to be used for educational purposes. Author suggests that ning is better than facebook and myspace for being used in education.

A powerful, though silent, ten-slide photo gallery that demonstrates why ning should be used in education

Diigo Educator Accounts: Your Diigo account can be upgraded to an Educator account to have these additional features: * You can create student accounts for an entire class with just a few clicks (and student email addresses are optional for account creation) * Students of the same class are automatically set up as a Diigo group so they can start using all the benefits that a Diigo group provides, such as group bookmarks and annotations, and group forums. * Privacy settings of student accounts are pre-set so that only teachers and classmates can communicate with them. * Ads presented to student account users are limited to education-related sponsors.

Social bookmarking can engage exploratory learning. When you bookmark a resource you can see how many other people bookmarked that page as well. This can lead you to explore other links that have been bookmarked by users who have the same interests as you. By definition this is social constructivism.

Discusses Social Bookmarking as a powerful search tool. While reading this I had the thought that social bookmarking applications could be used to create a limited research list for students to explore. This would be good for the WebQuest model of research especially. For example: A teacher has designed a WebQuest about Sea Lions and is asking their students to write an opinion paper about how Sea Lions help the ecosystem as the final project. The teacher could tag all the web pages with "sealion" that he/she wanted their students to read/research for this project. It creates a limited research list, however... it lets the teacher add resources whenever they come across one in their own personal reading. This allows the WebQuest to evolve, as more readings become available.

Social bookmarking can be used for much more than research. In the classroom we should think of social bookmarking applications as collection tools rather than strictly research tools. Students can actually CREATE projects using social bookmarking, not just conduct research for it.

This video details how teachers could use social bookmarking to bookmark resources for later use. Tagging resources with key words makes for more efficient recall of information, like tabs on folders in a file cabinet. Because social bookmarking tools allow bookmarks to be shared, bookmarking can be a collaborative effort. The same process can be implemented by students working as a group to conduct research for projects, as an ongoing literature sharing tool, or pretty much any collaborative exercise.

"In many ways, today's students live, work, and play in a digital world. Collaborative technologies also allow faculty to follow the group process of students." This article has great examples of resources, plus many benefits of using collaborative technologies for assessment, monitoring progress and giving feedback