Saturday, January 24, 2009

The Top 10 FREE Web 2.0 Sites for Educators

The session was presented by Steve Dembo, Online Community Manager for Discovery Education. Steve started out as a kindergarten teacher. Someone learned he could fix printers so he was promoted to technology director and now he works for Discovery Education. How cool is that?
Presentation can be found here.

What is Web 2.0? Web 2.0 applications should be entirely web based. So, for example, Skype or Google Earth, are not Web 2.0 tools. They have to be installed. Web 2.0 should be interactive in some way. It should also play well with other Web 2.0 applications.

#1 Bloglines - RSS feed Reader - It is a service that checks online to see if the blogs you subscribe to have a new post. You can quickly read through your blogs or newfeeds . You can also see who else subscribes to the people you read. You can check their feeds and borrow some of the same blogs to read. It's all about networking to find what would be pertinent to you.

#2 Del.icio.us - Social Bookmarking Where you can find your bookmarked favorites on any computer you are on because they are stored in a website. It also shows how many other people online have bookmarked a site. You organize your sites by tagging so you can look at what others have tagged and easily find sites to bookmark yourself. Efficient, easy.

#3 Crappy Graphs - Click over on the right for "Make your own" crappy graph. It would take a lot longer to do something like this in Excel. You can get the code and put it in your own blog. (The words crappy graph won't show up.)

#4 Voicethread - You can upload images to add voice comments to by webcam, microphone or even by phone! It creates a digital story that you are then able to link to or embed in your blog.

#5 Let Me Google That For You - Ok, you have to see this. It just kind of makes a point with people. It shows them what they could have done on their own...

#6 Poll Everywhere - It generates a text # for people to text in the response you request and then it will show up live in the site. You can also use multiple choice responses. You can also embed this in a powerpoint and it will show up in real time. You can also download a spreadsheet to show the responses and what phone numbers they came from. Don't spend the money on classroom response systems. Let the parents pay for the technology.

#7 Shout'Em - You go here and create your own network for microblogging which can be completely private for your students. It can also be sitting on your own domain.

#8 Mogulus - An entire TV studio in your browser

#9 osTube - Your OWN YouTube. When you go to the website you need to click English because it's a Danish site. It's not easy. You need to download it and an IT person may need to help you but it is very cool.

#10 Prezi - A new way of looking at presentations. Check it out!

It's not about spending more time online. It's about being more efficient with the time you do spend online.

6 comments:

dayle timmons said...

I was feeling pretty good at the top of the list- patting myself on the back - because I knew some of that stuff but towards the bottom... it just reminds me of how much more there is to learn! Bring it on!

Melissa Ross said...

Crappy Graphs looks really neat. I can't wait to try it with some data from a science lesson we just did.

Michelle Ellis & Debby Cothern said...

I am like dayle, I thought I was catching up, but now I know different. I hope we will be able to cover some of these in depth when we do your book study of Web 2.0.

Toni Chant said...

I love the challenge. It is a humbling feeling for me to feel some of the same frustrations that my students must feel as we learn and grow together. Keep it coming!

Jim Dornberg said...

IMHO Google Earth and Skype ARE Web 2.0 tools. Web 2.0 is about reading and writing to the web, about communicating in new ways and collaborating and sharing information.

Teach42 said...

@Jim Don't get me wrong, I think they're incredible tools. But I consider them to be programs, not Web 2.0 applications. And as I said at the beginning of the presentation, if you don't like my definition, then present your own Top 10 next year!! I'll attend :)

@Dayle and Michelle Seriously, I feel the same way. Every time I think I'm on top of it all, someone else mentions a site that "EVERYONE knew about 2 months ago" and that I'd never heard of. Don't worry, you're still way ahead of the game :)