Web+2.0+Tools

Collaborative Educational Technologies
The following was originally published January 30, 2009 at http://technologicalconundrum.blogspot.com/2009/01/collaborative-educational-technologies.html As many of us know, there are a world of Web 2.0 educational Internet sites out there at our disposal. Sifting through them to find what is useful for a particular lesson or unit is sometimes difficult. So, anyone out there that is using a great Web 2.0 educational tool, please feel free to comment on this blog and let everyone know about it. On lulu.com, which is a great self-publishing tool, there is a free downloadable book that attempts to highlight some useful Open Source Software tools for education. It is also listed on a blog called Ask BJ. You can go to this url: http://www.askbj.net/cms/node/6 and scroll down to the end of the page where you will see a link that says "Free Software for Schools." Click on it and choose to download or open it. It is a good resource; you should check it out.

Some of my favorite Web 2.0 educational tools are:
> media type="custom" key="3265666" > > **What are some of your favorites?** >
 * [|http://www.edu20.org] (educational social networking and on-line course software)
 * [|http://www.blogger.com] (blogging site - Use can use this for assessment purposes, or reflection) Here is an example of a blog I used for an informal assessment and student reflection on issues we covered in class: http://itclassroom207.blogspot.com/
 * Google Docs (create collaborative documents, presentations and spreadsheets)
 * Google Tools (especially notebook, Google Earth, Blogger and Sites - There are just so many it is hard to pick a favorite) Here is a place where you can get ideas for your classroom using Google - http://www.google.com/educators/index.html
 * http://www.wikispaces.com (create wikis for student collaboration) Here is an example where students created their wiki together on explaining new technologies: http://itclassroom207.wikispaces.com/IT+Classroom+207+-+Technology+Terms+Wiki+-+Computer+Applications+I
 * [|http://www.twitter.com] and [|http://www.twitpic.com] (These together could let you record field trips, or information gathering with a cell phone so that students could log into their twitter account upon record and have all their notes and pictures for use in their lap report, etc.) You can also use it as a mass notification system when your students are divided into groups by making sure each group has a phone with Twitter set up. Then you can send each group a simultaneous message or instructions all at one time using Twitter!
 * [|http://www.flickr.com] (on-line picture organizer that lets you search for pictures)
 * [|www.voicethread.com] (really cool - lets you comment on something with text, voice or video) Here is an example of one my 7th graders did to teach others to make strong passwords to protect their private information: