The 10 Best Free Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers

Steve Dembo of Discovery Educator Network shares the 10 best free Web 2.0 sites to transform learning-both your students' and your own.

Before sharing the tools he suggested that there are three broad rules for considering a tool a Web 2.0 tool. They are entirely web based, interactive, and they play well with others. This is his short list...

Bloglines: This aggregater allows you to grab information and bring it to one central location. The advantage is that you don't have to continue checking an array of sites to see if there are updates, rather this one stop shop shares the updates for quick and easy access to new information. The social part of this site (plays well with others) allows you to see who else is a follower of the blog.

Delicious: A social bookmarking site which allows you to store, share, and discover bookmarked sites. Forget the days of adding your sites to your favorites. The social part of this site, allows you to search within the delicious site and view the sites that others have bookmarked. It gives you the history on who bookmarked it, too. Tags allow you to tag the site for categorization. There is an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed which allows you to subscribe. If you find someone on delicious who is really organized, teaches a similar subject area, or has an area of similar interest to you, you could subscribe to their delicious tag, benefiting from their work. Also, you can bundle tags to make it easier for kids to search more easily if you use it in the classroom for students' research projects.

ShareTabs: Allows you to add a list of links to a window (central location). You can click, tabify them, see the preview, and the site creates tabs so you can click through them easily. You no longer have to type the whole url in the address bar. (Read more at this blog for classroom application.)

drop.io Upload files (images, PowerPoints, word docs etc...) The beauty is that you can phone it in, fax it, email it, text it, upload it, and share it. The site also allows you to do a full podcast for free, as well as provides a conference bridge. There are many different views in the settings, and drop.io provides you a chat box if you have friends on the site. You can use it to post assignments to your students and they can chat with you about the assignment. You can podcast through this site via a phone, and like the others on this list, it too, is totally free.

JayCut provides you with a full videobrowzer editor. Upload media, drag and drop into the video tab, and you can cut/edit. You can add images and JayCut has all your transitions, overlaps, effects, and titles. Audio is simple with a drag and drop. How do you get it out of JayCut? Download it or simply copy the embed code. Another bonus is unlimited capacity.

Edmodo, a private communication system built for teachers and students to share notes, links, and files.

Would you like to be able to easily poll your students, but don't want to spend money on a Classroom Response System? Try having students use their phone to text you their response. Poll Everywhere allows for 30 votes per poll for free. Set up many polls, download it as a PowerPoint, and as the results come in the slideshow will update. You can then copy, cut, and paste the results into anything. If you do want to do it in mass, they do have school versions for purchase. If every student doesn't have a cell phone, they can share their response via the computer. Just make sure that students have text coverage to make it a practical application in your classroom.

xtra normal: Text-to-speed moviemaking. Students can write a script and create a movie set. They can change the scene, the background, and the language. They can add animation. The only drawback is that when they finish the video must render. It gives you an embed code or can be published to youtube.

Livestream Allows a live free broadcast.

Prezi, a presentation tool that is much more intuitive than PowerPoint. No borders and slides. Simply add your links and talking points to this non-linear presentation and easily navigate to access information. To check out Steve's presentation from this session visit http://prezi.com/117545/.

Gadgets for Everyone!

Does anyone else love gadgets? Most teachers do! Leslie Fisher loves to share them!

Tripit.com Can be used anytime you make a reservation you send your itineraries to their email address at plans@tripit.com from your email and it will create your itenerary. So all those hotel confirmation emails and airline confirmation emails are put together. Share calendar formats with others. Use your phone to check itinerary while on the road. That way you're not pulling out a folder of travel information.

Yelp.com can be used by typing in your address and yelp can search for food closest to you. You can search specific foods. It is community driven so you can read reviews. Perfect for traveling or just looking for something new to eat around town!

Twitter.com Created by the guys that created Blogger. It is microblogging. If you just want to let someone know that there is a new iphone application you won't write a whole blog post about it, but you would twitter about it and everyone that follows you would then see that. You can have conversations with the people you follow also. It is limited to 140 characters for each "microblog" or entry.

Jott.com You join jott and it gives you a 1-800 to call and give yourself a reminder about something like picking up the laundry or remembering a birthday.
Remember the Milk is a similar application that is all about the lists you keep, so if you jott you can ask it to go to your Remember the Milk application. Nominal fee for jotting.

Evernote will grab anything: web pages, pictures, notes by using a web cam, phone camera or Evernote iphone application. It will sync these images or web pages today and organize them for you to find later.

Ustream.tv Allows you to set up a free account and post videos live as they happen. Perfect for recording presentations at conferences, classes for a student that is home sick and archiving lessons.

Mozy.com Are you backing up your computer regularly? Are you prepared to lose what is stored there? Online backup for Mac and PC $5.00 a month unlimited space. (2g free!) Install software, select files to be backed up and it's done! You can depend on it. Don't take chances, be proactive!

Orbicule Undercover If your Mac is stolen it will secretly transmit information once that computer accesses the internet again. The webcam will turn on and record the thief secretly. You can also install this on your iphone. It will send out a signal where your phone is and it will look like a game to the crook! Well worth the $ to you!

Smugmug.com You can get a professional level account as an educator. You are able to upload photos here for sharing. Consider possibly starting an account for all class photos where your parents can always have access to pictures they might want for themselves.

Sling Media External box that hooks up to your home theatre no matter how big or small and then uses a Internet connection to broadcast the signal to your CPU, Phone etc. You can watch your shows via wifi on your iphone or itouch. You can also attach a videocamera to the sling media and you are able to log in and view a live stream.

Leslie had even more things to share than these, but I couldn't keep up. I hope to catch up with her in another session tomorrow. Do you have any cool gadgets or apps you love?