This website will be used for the investigation of Web 2.0 tech tools and how they may be integrated in teaching and learning. Selected tech tools have been organized by their potential application and those titles are listed on the left navigation bar.
Each page of this website includes a variety of free tech tools that address areas in which students and faculty may want to try something different than what they are currently doing in and out of the classroom.
The poll for this list — The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education — 2009 — is located below this post, and closes on February 1, 2010. Please vote for no more than ten of the thirty-two sites listed. Please note that I’ll be listing these sites in my post from my pick from number thirty-two and ending at first place, but the poll is listed in the opposite order.
Number twenty: PodOmatic is an
extraordinarily easy way to create a podcast. Sign-up and your class has your
own channel — all you need is a computer microphone. I’m adding it to The Best Sites
To Practice Speaking English. I’m also adding it to The
Best Places Where Students Can Create Online Learning/Teaching Objects For An
“Authentic Audience”.
PinDax is a new web tool that lets you
“pin” virtual “Post It” notes on a virtual bulletin board. It’s very, very
similar to a tool I like a lot called Wallwisher. It has a lot more “bells
and whistles” than Wallwisher. That additional complexity (and I have to
admit, it doesn’t seem that much more complex — it just seems to have a
lot more options) doesn’t necessarily make it more attractive for classroom use.
Joyce Valenza and Kristen Swanson, have assembled a good collection of Web 2.0 tools and guides for teachers. The collection is part of STHS Library Guides. Their new tools catalog is organized by function (wikis, podcasting, etc) and topics related to technology use in schools (media literacy, fair use, privacy).
Applications for EducationIf you're the technology integration specialist or just the "techy" person that everyone goes to, the STHS Library New Tools is a good site to refer your colleagues to when they need a quick reference to learn about new tools.
An amazing array of resources for education: digital storytelling, copyright/creative commons, tag clouds, mindmapping, digital citizenship and more. Take 10 minutes to peruse this - impressive collection. Looks current, too.
Do you struggle to keep track of all your favorite Web sites and other online resources? Would you like to share the links to your favorite online resources with your colleagues or students? Using Diigo, you can both easily bookmark your favorite online resources in the cloud and annotate, share, and collaborate in new ways! This hands-on session will introduce the Diigo collaborative research tool and explore several practical applications for implementing collaborative resource sharing in the classroom.
Feed readers
are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they
make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet
easy. Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can
automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a
day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for
anyone.
Imagine
never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources
again. Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of
marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the
thoughts of writers that you trust, respect and enjoy.
Feed readers can
quickly and easily support blogging in the classroom, allowing teachers to
provide students with ready access to age-appropriate sites of interest that are
connected to the curriculum. By collecting sites in advance and organizing
them with a feed reader, teachers can make accessing information manageable for
their students.
Here are several
examples of feed readers in action:
Used specifically as
a part of one classroom project, this feed list contains information related to
global warming that students can use as a starting point for individual
research.
While there are literally dozens of different feed reader
programs to choose from (Bloglines andGoogle Reader are two
biggies), Pageflakes is a favorite of
many educators because it has a visual layout that is easy to read and
interesting to look at. It is also free and web-based. That
means that users can check accounts from any computer with an Internet
connection. Finally, Pageflakes makes it quick and easy to add new
websites to a growing feed list—and to get rid of any websites that users are no
longer interested in.
What's even
better: Pageflakes has been developinga teacher version of their tooljust for us that includes an online grade tracker,
a task list and a built in writing tutor. As Pageflakes works to perfect
its teacher product, this might become one of the first kid-friendly feed
readers on the market. Teacher Pageflakes users can actually blog and create a
discussion forum directly in their feed reader---making an all-in-one digital
home for students.
For more
information about the teacher version of Pageflakes, check out this
review:
“How can educators around the world use technology to connect, collaborate,
teach, support and inspire each other? Collaborative Internet applications allow
educators to create online communities that support their professional learning
and relieve their isolation. In this session we will focus on the ways two
social networking tools, Twitter and Classroom 2.0, can be harnessed to build a
rich and powerful learning community.
I realize there are many amazing posts on the merits of using Twitter to develop a PLN. I also realize that there already exists dozens of collections of tools for making the most of Twitter. Yet, as I prepare for my presentation at NJECC's annual conference tomorrow, I am compelled to write one of my own.
If you are fearful of Facebook and MySpace then you need to create an Edmodo account. Edmodo was designed specifically for educational purposes. You must be a teacher, student, or parent to gain access. It allows you all the amenities of those other social networking sites but with a lot more security/privacy.
Yes, it is free and you can manage student accounts. It is only open to those you invite in and only educators may obtain an account. You may monitor and moderate all conversations, administer quizes, embed media, etc. The groups feature is very effective and you may grant access to your group to other classes. We just had 700+ students interacting in a global collaboration project, Digiteen.
Students do not need an email address to use Edmodo, so under 13 is OK for CIPA. It looks much like Facebook, so kids love it and parents need some education on it as they fear it at first. Parents can get monitoring access so they may monitor their child's activity. It is a great tool to show parents how social media is used in education.
Group items tagged 
Cached
Checklist to use before embarking on a blogging project with students
Account
