These days teams can be dispersed all over the globe. With outsourcing, telecommuting, distance learning and complex project collaboration, it's often helpful to have tools that can assist with the various collaborative tasks need to be done by dispersed teams. I've put together a great list of 27 free web based tools that will help you and your teammates do nearly all the things you need to do to work together from different locations. There are virtual workspaces, customer service applications, project management tools, mindmapping and even online conferencing tools - all FREE! Have a look and see if you can use any of these to connect with others and collaborate!
It has never been easier to connect classrooms around the world, and lots of teachers are doing it in different ways. In this course we will explore how you can turn a connection into a global learning experience for your students. We will look at ways to make this experience authentic and real, and discuss what it takes to collaborate with other classes in other countries. Ultimately our contention is that authentic global collaboration has less to do with the tools and more to do with approaches to teaching and learning.
C3PO stands for Connecting Peers, Perspectives, and Pedagogy Online. This website is designed to give educators the resources they need to connect with other classrooms from around the world in order to collaborate and learn in an authentic 21st century environment. In this age of increased emphasis on literacy, higher demands for technology, and rapidly depleting school budgets, this type of free, online collaboration is both highly necessary and relevant.
Where Do You Want to Go Today?
A collaborative videoconference project gives you and your students an opportunity to learn with another school or classroom.
CAPspace is a social networking tool for educational videoconferencing built into the new Read Around the Planet registration system. Login to find colleagues and schools interested in collaborative videoconference (H.323 and H.320) projects, and participate in TWICE sponsored matching projects.
haring and reviewing documents and presentations with others can be quite a pain. crocodoc was built to change that, alleviating the need to email attachments back and forth, print and pass around hard copies, or install expensive collaboration software.
crocodoc takes your PDFs, Word documents, and PowerPoint presentations, and lets you view and mark them up online. Documents can be shared with others, who can collaboratively highlight or strikeout text, add notes and comments, and make revisions. All files are stored securely on our servers, and can be password protected and encrypted for maximum security.
"Wikis are an exceptionally useful tool for getting students more involved in curriculum. They're often appealing and fun for students to use, while at the same time ideal for encouraging participation, collaboration, and interaction. Read on to see how you can put wikis to work in your classroom."
"Colllabo is a sharing and collaboration community for educators. As technology improves, access to quality resources and information does not need to be limited to inside your school. Educators around the globe are doing amazing work with students every day, and we need a place for this work to be shared, discussed, and developed. Colllabo is a community where educators can ask and answer questions, share and recommend lessons, as well as collaborate together on projects."
We Video is a collaborative online video creation tool. In the video editor you can upload your own media clips or use stock media clips to produce your video. The video editor provides tools for trimming the length of display and or sound of each element you add to your video project. What makes We Video collaborative is that you can invite other people to create and edit with you. We Video offers four different user plans. The free plan allows you to upload your videos to YouTube and Vimeo but does not allow local downloads.
LearnCentral is a new social learning network for education, sponsored by Elluminate. More than a social network or a learning community, this free, open environment represents the next logical step of combining asynchronous social networking and the ability to store, organize, and find educational resources with the live, online meeting and collaboration provided by Elluminate technology.
Not just for Elluminate customers, LearnCentral is for any educator who is passionate about teaching and learning and wants to find and connect with like-minded colleagues to share content, develop best practices, and collaborate on a global level. While still in its early stages, LearnCentral has the potential to make a significant historical difference in how educators work together for professional development in their own careers.
The school year is off and running! Along with the preparation of bulletin boards, seating charts, classroom procedures and syllabi, it is also important for teachers to consider the go-to digital tools and resources they will rely upon throughout the school year. The five tools and resources outlined below can be utilized by teachers and students in many different classroom settings, grade levels and subject areas for creation, communication, collaboration and so much more.
Help your students build the skills they need for the future-such as problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity-with Partners in Learning. You'll meet other innovative teachers for collaboration opportunities, get access to free teacher resources, and learn about great ways to improve your personal teaching practice using technology.
"A.nnotate is an online annotation, collaboration and indexing system for documents and images, supporting PDF and MS Office formats. Instead of emailing different versions of a document back and forth you can now all comment on a single read-only copy online. Unlike online word processors, the document is displayed in high quality with fonts and layout just like the printed version. It is easy to use and runs in all common web browsers, with no software or plugins to install.
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MixedInk takes a fresh approach to collaborative writing. It's a fun, democratic and elegant way for people to weave their best ideas together. (Plus, it's free!)
StickySorter is an Office Labs sponsored spare-time project by two Microsoft employees, Julie and Sumit. The idea sprung from the need for project teams all over the world to gather and organize data using a collaborative process known as affinity diagramming. Since its inception, StickySorter has evolved into a desktop application so anyone can use it to collaborate and organize ideas electronically, using a familiar sticky note interface.