Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 Tools

This page covers new tools provided by the web.. See the Web 2.0 Techniques page for applications and software that offer innovative ways to use the tools.

Quick Links to Topics on This Page:

Web 2.0

  • The Web is Using Us You Tube video that explains web 2.0.
  • Web 2.0 Introduction in Five Minutes from You Tube.
  • Understanding Web 2.0 from You Tube explains the phenomenon for educators.
  • Web 2.0 for Writers Watch this Flowgram explaining blogs, wikis, twitter, vizualization, data searchand RSS feeds. It also explains how you can use them in class.
  • Flowgram - The tool that was used to put the Web 2.0 for Writers together. It's a free download and provides a link or widget that can be shared for viewing.
  • Exploring Web 2.0 PowerPoint
  • This PowerPoint from Mission to Learn describes e-learning 2.0. with a series of diagrams that map the transition from learning 1.0 through 1.5 to 2.0. It gives an overview of the tools that are part of the 2.0 world and suggestions for things you can do with them in your course.
  • Teaching and Learning in Web 2.0 looks at the evolutions and technologies that created this online network. It was presented by Gardner Campbell at the ELI 2008 conference.
  • Interesting Web 2.0 Snippets: Each of these 229 slides illustrate an aspect of our new web. You can also find notes and a reference for each slide. The slides are CC licensed, so you can use them in your (non-commercial) presentation.
  • Web 2.0 and Learning Technologies This wiki book is visual presentation with parts and chapters. It is an extensive look at new technologies and is part of the Wikibook Online Work (WOW) Project.
  • 9thPeriod.com is an academic-based social network that allows students taking common classes to use Web 2.0 tools to access study materials and get homework help. It's free for educators, students and parents. College and k-12 schools are part of the network.

Web 2.0 Cool Tools

  • Cool Tools for Teaching with Technology. This presentation organzizes tools available on the web. Most are free, requring only registration.
  • Cool Tools on a hyperlinked mind map: The links are categories and expand to give the web sites. Click on the icons to the right of the sites to link there. These cool tools for teaching are free and downloadable.
  • Link to Cool Tools Mindmap in Mindomo

Web 3.0

  • Web 3.0 video
  • WolframAlpha is Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. Enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and a growing collection of data to compute the answer. Based on a new kind of knowledge- based computing.

Blogs & Wikis

A blog—shorthand for "Web log"—is an online collection of personal commentary and links. Blogs can be viewed as online journals to which others can respond that are as simple to use as e-mail. The simplicity of creating and maintaining blogs means they can rapidly lead to open discussions.

Faculty are using blogs to express their opinions, promote dialogue in their disciplines, and support teaching and learning; students increasingly use blogs for personal expression and as course requirements. By carefully evaluating blogs' strengths and weaknesses, educators are learning to set guidelines and expectations to maximize blogs' instructional benefits. Structured exercises and clear goals are further enhancing the educational value of blogs.

Put into practice with an understanding of their benefits and limitations, blogs are an increasingly accepted instructional technology tool.

  • Blogs in Plain English from You Tube.
  • Create a Blog Getting started at Blogger.com
  • Word Press Hosts free blogs. You can pay for extra features.
  • Square Space This is a fee based blogging tool but offers the ability to have people subscribe and get automatic updates (RSS).
  • SquareSpace - Gettng started on Square Space video.
  • 7 Things You Should Know About Blogs The place to start for a quick and easy wrap-up on what blogs are, who's blogging, and how do blogs work from Educause ELearning Initiative
  • Guide to Blogging. This ELI Discovery Tool explores what blogging is and how it might support teaching and learning. Its simple, accessible information walks you through important areas to consider before adopting blogging:
    • Examples of how blogging can be used for teaching and learning
    • Firsthand student perspectives on blogging
    • Advice on key implementation considerations, including planning issues, engaging stakeholders, and faculty support
    • Approaches for assessing class blogging
  • Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students - from Campus Technology Magazine.
  • A Comprehensive Guide to a Professional Blog Site: A WordPress Example
  • Blogs in Education A complete guide and lots of links to resources prepared by University Computer and Telecommunications at the University of Houston - Clear Lake.
  • Blogs vs. Discussion This is a blog that hosts a discussion about how these two tools are used, citing the differences.
  • Rip Mix Learn - Workshops of What to Do with Blogs in the Classroom, Explore Classroom Blogs and Exploring Teacher Blogs. While you are there check out the summary of RSS feeds by Darren Kuropatwa.
  • Blogs to Check Out from Debi McGuire, Wilkes Community College.

Wikis

Wikis (word is Hawaiian meaning quick) are Web pages that can be viewed and modified by anyone with a Web browser and Internet access. Described as a composition system, a discussion medium, and a repository, wikis support asynchronous communication and group collaboration online.

Their inherent simplicity gives students direct access to their content, which is crucial in group editing or other collaborative activities. Their versioning capability allows them to illustrate the evolution of thought processes as students interact with a site and its contents.

Wikis are also being used as e-portfolios, highlighting their utility as a tool for collection and reflection. They may be the easiest, most effective Web-based collaboration tool in any instructional portfolio.

Social Media

  • Social Media in Five Minutes from You Tube explains the power of Web 2.0 applications.
  • 7 Things You Should Know About Ning. Ning, an online service where users create their own social networks and join and participate in other networks, lets instructors design and employ social networks to encourage personal interactions that can lead to the creation of new knowledge.
  • Create Your Own Social Network 7 Steps Download a step by step guide to creating your own social network, as well as looking at some evaluation criteria and some things you should think about before setting up your own network from Nik Peachey's Learning Technology Teacher Development blog.
  • Busuu - online language learning community, join for free

RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a protocol that lets users subscribe to online content using a "reader" or "aggregator." Internet users tend to settle on preferred information sources. RSS allows users to create a list of those sources in an application that automatically retrieves updates, saving users considerable time and effort.

Web publishers use RSS to easily create and distribute news feeds that include links, headlines, and summaries.

Twitter

Mobile Learning

  • 7 Things You Should Know About Multi-Touch Interfaces: Multi-touch interfaces are input devices that recognize two or more simultaneous touches, allowing users to interact with computer applications through swipes, pinches, rotations, and other actions that enable richer, more immediate interaction with digital content. Learn how these devices are facilitating collaborative creation at this Educause site.
  • Mobile Learning: A wiki and links for emerging techniques using mobile learning from proponent, Debi McGuire, Wilkes Community College.

Emerging Technologies

New Media Search

  • Wibe7.tv searches for video by title or category. It is massive.
  • hulu is an online video service that provides movies and TV shows for personal and non-commercial use. Downloader is free.
  • Addictomatic searches the best live sites on the web for the latest news, blog posts, videos and images. Wide variety of subjects.
  • Kosmix is a dashboard for searching videos, news, entertainment, images and even includes a daily cheap offering from Woot in a magazine style.
  • seeqpod Playable search for clips, track and presentations - for computer and mobile device.
  • imeem Download music clips

Collaboration Tools

  • Way-new Collaboration: Web 2.0 presents new ways to cooperate. This TED talk by Howard Rheingold looks at the evolution of collaboration and observes that it is how civilization has progressed.
  • Collaboration Worksheet Use this worksheet as a guide to detail collaborative assignments.
  • Concept Share The ConceptShare workspace is a high performance collaborative environment, designed to give the maximum screen real estate to share and review your designs. The interface allows you to quickly and easily switch between multiple concepts, review and markup, comment, manage participants and chat.
  • Voicethread is a web-based collaborative network that is simple, and powerful. Images can be annotated with collaborative comments.
  • Wiggio is a tool used for group work. It shares calendar, email, voice or text messages, files, polling and hosts conferences.

Sharing Sites

  • Slideshare FAQs Find Tips and Tricks, tutorials and a video explanation here.
  • Slideshare is a way to share your presentations with the world. You can add audio, voice narration, music or effects, and share publicly or privately.
  • You Tube is a free and searchable platform that hosts short videos on every subject imaginable.
  • My Plick is a slide sharing site that allows you to upload slides and created audio commentary. These are shared and open source.
  • Quenchmark is a user-generated website with topics, questions, and answers. Quenchmark is the new social networking tool for opinion polls, surveys, and data validation.
  • WiZIQ offers free live audio and video conferencing and the ability to share content.
  • Wiz IQ video on what the software can do.
  • Google Docs allow you to share and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
  • Kaltura, a video collaboration and editing program, explained on You Tube.
  • Kaltura An open-ource platform for video creation, management, interaction, and collaboration. Kaltura enables any site to integrate advanced interactive rich–media functionalities, including video searching, uploading, importing, editing, annotating, remixing, and sharing.
  • Drop.io Free online sharing of 100 MB, files, ikmages, links, video, podcasts. Can conference call, share by email, mobile phone, web, fax
  • Teacher Tube is a free and searchable database of videos produced for and by teachers.

Bookmarking Tools

  • Diigo, a free bookmarking service, is explained on You Tube.
  • Diigo is a free bookmarking service that lets you highlight text and comment on Web pages. Diigo caches each site so that you can search within text, not just the topic tags. Diigo also allows you to save bookmarks in del.icio.us. Tagging, Organizing, and Sharing
  • Del.icio.us Social Bookmarking in Five Minutes from You Tube.
  • del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website -- the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.
  • Zotero video on what the software can do.
  • Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, Firefox extension to help collect, manage, and cite your research sources.
  • Evernote Capture information in any environment using computer, phone, web.Accessible and searchable from anywhere.
  • AcademiaConnect is global online directory and research sharing for scholars.
  • LibX Plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer that provides direct access to your library's resources.
  • Dictionary and Language plug ins for Firefox.

Mindmapping Tools

  • Mindomo is free and creates dynamic, multilevel mind maps. You can insert text, hyperlinks and video files.
  • Personal Brain, a visual bookmarking site, explained on You Tube.
  • Personal Brain Visual bookmarking, personal information management, mind mapping, research and analysis, and more.
  • Mind Mapping: Wikipedia gives description, uses, research and tools.
  • Wisdom Map: organises information and thought processes and stores them in a visual format, while managing media and resources like videos, pictures, websites and files.
  • FreeMind is open source mind mapping software.
  • Directory of Learning Tools: From the Center for Learning and Performance Technologies. This page contains a wide variety of tools that can be used for individual or group mind mapping or brainstorming.
  • How to Use Mind Maps Article that describes how use a mind map to organize thoughts, see links in concepts, gather resources, and brainstorm ideas.
  • Test2mindmap Creates amind map out of a list of words.
  • Mindmeister Brainstorm, plan, think visually
  • ExploraTree Offers a library of ready-made interactive thinking guides.
  • Mindmapping and Information Organization software: a list that rates programs, many of them free.

Web Conferencing

  • Eluminate. See how to use this conferencing/teaching tool on You Tube.
  • EluminatevRoom Real-time collaboration with up to three participants using interactive features such as: Two-way audio, Interactive whiteboard, Direct messaging, Application sharing, File transfer, Synchronized web tour. Live webcam, and Breakout rooms.
  • MeBeam, a video conferencing tool, explained on You Tube.
  • MeBeam adds video chat to Google Talk, text chat, and video conferencing for up to 12.
  • Yugma offers desktop sharing and collagboration for Mac, PC and Linux.
  • Dimdim offers synchronized live presentations, whiteboards, web pages, voice and video. No download required. Free recording and archiving. Mac and PC screensharing. Free for up to 20 people.
  • Sketchcast offers a whiteboard with audio.

Communication Tools

  • Skype, a free voiceover internet protocol, explained on You Tube.
  • Skype. Download this free Voiceover Internet Protocol (VoIP). This application lets users make free phone calls between Skype-equipped computers and inexpensive calls to landlines and cell phones.
  • ELI's 7 Things You Should Know about Skype
  • Google Talk, an internet voiceover program, explained on You Tube.
  • Google Talk gives you instant messaging Gmail, PC to PC voice calls, and file transfers.
  • Jott Free software that converts voice to text.
  • Lively is a chat experience in which you can communicate and express yourself using avatars in your very own space. Choose an avatar and use it to make friends and chat. Create rooms, decorate them to your liking, and make sure to invite your friends over.
  • Voice Thread provides the platform for group conversations around images, docs, and videos.

File Converters

  • Squared 5 Video converter for Mac and PC.video converter, player, editor for MPEG, QuickTime, transport streams, iPod. And is a DivX editor and encoding machine, and even a stream and YouTube downloader -from MPEG StreamClip.
  • Zamzar Free online file converter, download YouTube videos, podcasts, convert to any file format, up to 100 MB
  • Firefox Video Downloader Allows download from YouTube

Authoring Tools

  • Jing The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video from your computer to anywhere. Creates Flash files that are housed on a Jing server.
  • CaptureFox is a Firefox plug-in that captures screen shots, offers easy editing and voice recording. It creates .avi files.
  • Wink Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software. Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users.
  • You Tube tutorials How to create, upload and download videos from About.com
  • Teacher Tube, a demonstration of where teachers make their videos, on You Tube.
  • MyUdutu Authoring tool to createlearning simulations, animations, interactive templates, branching with complex scenarios.Supports major graphic, audio, video formats, PowerPoint. Imports into Learning Management System.
  • Toondoo Choose from templates to create three panel comic strips.