Web+2.0+Tools

toc The term "Web 2.0" does not refer to any new kind of technology or a new version of the internet. Rather, it refers to a new way of //using// the resources of the World Wide Web to create, collaborate, and communicate.

Basically (as I understand it!), "Web 2.0" includes a number of tools, websites, etc. which allow for __user-created__ content and a broad range of collaborative projects.

This page contains a list of Web 2.0 resources, including links and descriptions, for teachers in the Hilbert School District. I plan to update this page any time I find cool new resources.

Click here to view the Web 2.0 Tools slideshow from our Feb. 4th PLC meeting

=Blogs and Wikis=

Blogs
Blogs (or Web Logs) kind of began as a way for people to publish their ideas, sort of like journals or diaries, and have become much more than that. Blogs are usually written by an individual or a group of individuals, and often are focused on a particular idea, subject, or topic (e.g. an English teacher might blog about literature and lesson plans, a science professor about his classes, someone interested in law and politics might blog about those topics).

My own blog reader contains blogs relating to teaching, technology, politics and news, webcomics and humor, woodworking, music, and philosophy. There are a number of education blogs which offer updated resources and idea for teachers.

Examples of blogs both for and by teachers include: http://www.huffenglish.com/ http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ http://access.aasd.k12.wi.us/Staff/Hoffman/Wpress/ http://practicingteaching.blogspot.com/ http://www.speedofcreativity.org/ http://tech4teaching.org/wpblog

Blogs are also a great way for teachers to share ideas and experiences with other teachers, and classroom blogs are a great tool for publishing student work and for facilitating online discussions. Blogs are, by their nature, interactive--comments allow readers to leave feadback and continue a discussion of what the blogger wrote. Classroom and student blogs offer students a way to express themselves with an actual, authentic audience. Additionally, blogs have really begun to gain and maintain legitimacy as major players in terms of 21st century communication and journalism.

You can produce and host a blog--for free--with [|Edublogs], [|Wordpress], or [|Blogger](with a Google account). I've tried them each, and personally, I prefer Wordpress. The interface is a little easier to navigate and use, and it provides a lot of options for customizing your blog. Embedding pictures, videos, and other media is fairly easy as well.

Wikis
Wikis have some of the same functionality as blogs, but most are designed to be maintained by a group of people. That's the joy of wikis--that they can be updated and edited by several people. Wikipedia is probably the most famous. This online encyclopedia is written and edited by a community of contributors. Basically, anyone who wants to can contribute (Wikipedia does have methods in place to attempt to ensure accuracy).

Most wikis, though, are maintained by a group of writers / contributors that are given access to the wiki. For example, I set up this wiki to be used by my students for classroom projects, and I set up user accounts (including user names and passwords) for each student. Only they have editing privileges--anyone in the world can read the wiki, but only those with user accounts can edit it. (As a result of this set up, any time the wiki is edited, I get an e-mail telling me exactly what changes have been made by whom.)

I've used the wiki as a place for students to work together in small groups to produce and publish content: [|Macbeth Word Trace] [|Edgar Allen Poe Parodies]

And I plan to use the wiki as a tool for facilitating online discussion about topics we have addressed in class: Entry 1--Age and Youth in Coleridge and Wordsworth

Both [|PBwiki]and Wikispacesoffer free wikis for educators. PB wiki is probably easier to use, but Wikispaces offers a few more options and add-ons. Both offer paid upgrades (I've found the free versions to be more than adequate for what I need). This page is hosted by Wikispaces.

RSS
One of the coolest things about blogs and wikis is that they are continuously updated--some blogs will have several new posts each day. The way to keep track of and be alerted to new posts to your favorite blogs is with an RSS reader. RSS simply refers to the means by which websites like blogs publish their newly posted content to their subscribers (some say it stands for "Really Simple Syndication"). With an RSS reader (like [|Google Reader] or any of a number of free stand-alone apps), you can subscribe to any number of feeds, and your reader is regularly updated any time new content is posted. I have 50 or more items in my reader, and without it, I would need to check each of those websites individually to see if any new content had been added since the last time I read it.

To subscribe to a blog or other website, look for the (usually) orange RSS symbol:

=Social and Professional Networking=

Twitter
My wife introduced me to [|Twitter], and it has quickly become one of my favorite and most useful online social networks. Twitter is a "micro-blogging" network: basically, you can update your status, answering the question "What are you doing?" and people who follow you will receive your "tweet" in their timeline. You can follow others and be updated about what they are doing as well. Twitter also allows you to reply directly to other users and to send them direct (private) messages as well.

That may not sound like much, but there are //a lot// of educators--teachers, administrators, education professors, technology coordinators, etc.--using Twitter, and it is a great way to ask questions, share ideas, exchange resources, discuss educational issues, and simply socialize with others who share similar interests with you.

My Twitter network consists of a few people I know personally (my wife and some other local teachers), teachers and administrators from around the world, and news organizations like NPR and the //New York Times// (among others). Many of the other resources I've included in this wiki are things I've learned about from my Twitter friends.



[|A list of articles about using Twitter, Twitter resources, Twitter etiquette, and more.]

Nings
Nings are new to me. From what I can tell, a Ning is a website that combines several other Web 2.0-type tools into one place: a Ning can include several blogs written by different members, discussion forums, groups pages, places for posting multimedia (pictures, videos, etc.), all in one place. I joined http://englishcompanion.ning.com/ a short time ago, and I am still just familiarizing myself with all the site has to offer. http://thesynapse.ning.com/ is a new Ning for science teachers.

Edmoto
[|Edmoto] is a "private microblogging platform" for teachers and students. It's basically Twitter, except that teachers can create groups which have a unique code--only students with that code have access to the group. Edmoto can be used to distribute notes, links, files, assignments, information about events, and more.

=Collaboration, Social Bookmarking, and File Sharing= In addition to tools like wikis, nings, and Twitter, the following resources allow for teachers and students to collaborate and share files online.

Google Docs
[|Google Docs] is a suite of office applications (apps)--basically, a free, online version of Office. Google offers a word processing app (similar to Word), a spreadsheet app (Excel), and a presentation app (PowerPoint). You can upload existing files to Google docs and have them available to you anywhere you have an internet connection, or you can create new docs online. Google docs also lets you share your work and collaborate with others--a whole classroom of students can edit a spreadsheet, document, or presentation, and they can comment on each other's work. (For a free, "offline," open source suite of office tools, I really like Open Office. It is compatible with both MS Office and Google Docs, and it's completely **free**!)

Delicious
[|Delicious.com] is a "social bookmarking" site. An account at Delicious lets you add bookmarks (links to websites) and view others' bookmarks. You can organize your bookmarks using tags, or labels, and by searching others' tags, you can often find useful links on a given topic. I use Delicious to keep track of websites I might find useful in the future, but don't use all the time. I don't need to remember all of the URLs this way, and the bookmarks are accessible from any computer with internet access.

Drop.io
[|Drop.io] is something I just discovered (thanks to my Twitter network!) that I think could be a very useful tool. Drop.io lets you create free "drops," sites on which you can upload almost any file. You can assign the drop a password, and anyone with that password can access the drop in order to view and / or download the files. (you can set it up so that an administrator password is required to delete or move the files). You can upload files from a computer, e-mail them to the drop, record voice files via a unique voicemail number, and even set up conference calls through the drop.

I can see this being useful to teachers in a number of ways. One teacher (whose blog is in my RSS reader) uses drop.io whenever she has a substitute. She calls into the drop and records the instructions for the day. Students know that they need to log in and listen to these instructions, and that way, she knows that everyone hears the same thing rather than relying on the sub to convey her instructions accurately. Drops could also be used to distribute handouts that not every student will need. For example, extra credit instructions could be posted to the drop, and anyone interested could view and/or download and print the instructions. Permission slips could be uploaded, and when a student (inevitably) loses his or her copy, he or she--or her parents--could obtain a new one from the site.

Stixy
[|Stixy] is a collaborative "bulletin board." Stixy gives you a page on which you can add text notes, pictures, and other files (you can upload PDFs, Word documents, and other files) in any arrangement you want. You are not limited to columns, grids, or other organizational limitations--it is as open and as free-form as a real bulletin board.

You can also collaborate with other users on Stixy. Users do not need to create an account, either. Simply give them the URL to your Stixy, and they can begin to add content to the page easily.

Stixy could be a great way to share ideas and questions with other teachers. Students could use Stixy for online research--they could use a Stixy board as a "dropping off point" for notes, links to online resources, information about articles and citations, pictures, and more. A Stixy could also be used for classroom collaborations--students working on a project could share and organize ideas and resources in one spot, online, from any computer with internet acces.

Slideshare
[|Slideshare] allows you to upload slide shows from Powerpoint (or other presentation apps) "tag" (label) them, and share them. Slideshare presentations can be made public or private--so you can choose who you want to share them with. You can also synchronise the slide show to an audio file to create a narrated presentation.

=Copyright and Creative Commons= One thing to keep in mind when using any Web 2.0 tool that allows you or students to publish work to the web is the issue of copyrighted material. Students especially like to put pictures and other images into their projects and presentations, and the most common way for them to find these is by simply searching Google or another search engine. The problem with this is that many of the images they find are likely copyrighted, and students rarely give credit to the owner of that copyright in their project. While this may not seem like a big deal for a PowerPoint presentation a student gives in your classroom, when that same student is publishing his or her work on the web, it becomes public and probably deserves more scrutiny.

A Creative Commons License is one way to address this problem. Creative Commons is a non-profit organization which works to expand the kind of creative work that is available online for others to use and build upon //legally//. Searching for "Creative Commons" in Google will give you a number of options for finding images and other material which has been licenced under a Creative Commons license (this wiki is, in fact, licensed in this manner, as you can see at the bottom of the page).

For photographs, I like the [|Flickr Creative Commons] page. Here you can learn about the different kinds of Creative Commons licenses, and if you click on any of the "See More" links, you'll be taken to a page from which you can search for images with that particular license. You can use this to search for pictures that you or your students can safely and legally use in your projects.

=Other Tools= There are a number of other cool online tools available for students and teachers--and most of them are free. I haven't had direct experience using all of these, but I've seen projects produced by other teachers (or their students), and I can see a lot of possibilities in them.

Big Huge Labs
[|Big Huge Labs] is a site that utilizes Flickr (a site which lets people to upload and share photos) and allows users to create a number of different projects with their pictures. The tools on this site will allow you to turn pictures into jigsaw puzzles, inspirational posters, trading cards, magazine covers, movie posters, and a lot more.

While I haven't had the chance to use this site yet, I can see this being useful in my English classroom... For example, I can have students create trading cards for each character in a novel or play. They would have to make or find a picture (with the appropriate Creative Commons license, if the picture is not their own) and fill in the rest of the card with the appropriate information about the character, his or her relation to others, strenghts and weaknesses, etc. Creating movie posters or magazine covers for a text is another option and another way for students to illustrate their understanding of a text in a creative way.

Animoto
[|Animoto] is a "digital storytelling" website which lets you create slideshows with your own photgraphs. Basically you upload a batch of pictures, and Animoto adds music (legal, royalty free tunes) and transitions, and you get an animated slideshow complete with soundtrack. (If you want to use Animoto, make sure you sign up for an educational account [|here]. It may take a few days to authenticate your e-mail and account. Be patient.)

Voicethread
[|Voicethread] is another digital storytelling tool similar to Animoto. The difference is that Voicethread allows you to include your own voiceover soundtrack, rather than using the website's music. Voicethread is also collaborative--people can comment on other's voicethreads and turn a video into a discussion. The video [|here] shows it better than I can.

This [|blog post] also has a great example of an extensive voice thread about encouraging students to read for enjoyment. This example showcases a conversation among several teachers in different states communicating, sharing, and exchanging ideas.

Glogster
[|Glogster] lets its users create multimedia posters. A poster, or "glog," can include text, images, vido, links, and more. If you're using a wiki, it is incredibly easy to embed a glog into a wiki page like this one.

TeacherTube
[|TeacherTube] is a "safe" alternative to YouTube--videos are created for and by students and teachers. This is a great resource for finding videos to use in class, and you and your students can upload your own videos to the site.

=Web 2.0 Links=

[|cl1p.net]-- copy & paste between computers, create an online notebook or message board [|Photo laboratory (Photl.com)] -- a database of free stock photo images