What are your experiences as to Web 2.0 tools?

Using Web 2.0 tools in the classroom is very important. Which one do you use most and what can you recommend to the group?

Tags: 2.0, Web

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Permalink Reply by TeachingSagittarian on May 26, 2007 at 4:17pm

My students and I have 3 favourite web2.0 tools in the classroom at the moment.

Wikispaces has opened up a whole new direction in our learning and is so student-teacher-friendly.

VoiceThread is an amazing tool that has motivated each and every student in the class. It's particularly beneficial to those students who are not strong writers.

And last but not least is YackPack. YackPack allows us to keep in voice contact with students around the world that we are doing collaborative projects with. Because timezones don't always allow us to skype at suitable times, YackPack solves the problem for us by letting us leave private messages for one another in our yackpacks.

Permalink Reply by Hans Feldmeier on May 27, 2007 at 1:02pm

I use the same tools. But check out authorstream
You are able to add your ppt to a blog or website.

Permalink Reply by Kristian Still on May 28, 2007 at 9:39am

I asked a similar question to Nextgen Teachers Hans. I am very much in favour of collaboration and blended learning tools but also very interested in the teaching that introduces these teaching models. A couple of tools to share;

http://bubbl.us/ http://gabbly.com/ http://quizlet.com/

here are a few more, presented as I stumbled upon.
http://btecnationalsinsport.wikispaces.com/The+Staff+Room

Permalink Reply by Hans Feldmeier on May 28, 2007 at 9:47am

Hi Kristian, many thanks for your recommondations! I will check it out.

Permalink Reply by Paul Harrington on June 10, 2007 at 9:10am

Hi Hans
I teach in a Primary School amd my pupils are 7-8 years old. their favourite tool at the moment because it allows them freedom to develop their own voice is a Landmarks ClassBlogmeister Blog where they each have their own personal blog space. We have also discovered the power of leaving comments on other peoples blogs.
We also love using Skype to talk to our friends in E-Twinning in Italy, Estonia and the Czech Republic, and to our wider friends in New Zealand and Canada.
My pupils are also developing their own voice using the medium of podcasting, where this term I have allowed them to develop their own projects.
A new tool that I have been playing with and which has potential is Flixn http://www.flixn.com a tool which allows you to record short 5 minute videos which can then be embedded in blogs wiki's my space and bebo etc. ( great for short language pieces between European Partners I think.)
Paul

Permalink Reply by suziea on June 24, 2007 at 2:31pm

I use a number of web 2.0 tools. I maintain a wiki about these tools which can be accessed at:
http://educationalsoftware.wikispaces.com

I am constantly finding new and exciting ones. My current favourites are Zentation (a Slideshare and Google video mashup) and Screencast-o-matic for making instructions for teachers that directly load into the website for me to then embed in my wiki.

Permalink Reply by Hans Feldmeier on June 24, 2007 at 2:42pm

Hi, I use wikispaces and screencast-o-matic as well. Check out www.mindmeister.com for mindmapping as well.

Permalink Reply by suziea on June 24, 2007 at 9:36pm

Mindmeister looks very interesting! I have a couple of other mindmap tools that I use. Mindomo is now out of beta and has a lot of functionality (maybe too much at times). Mind 42 is a much more pared down mindmap but I don't like the fact that I can't easily reposition the nodes though I do like being able to invite others to collaborate.

Permalink Reply by Chris Jackson on June 29, 2007 at 2:08pm

I like bubbl.us for mindmapping. It is so simple and easy to use. I find most mindmapping has far too much functionality, The sharing with learners works well. For myself I cannot do without Pageflakes and I can see this working well with classes too.

Permalink Reply by Hans Feldmeier on June 29, 2007 at 3:00pm

Thanks Chris, bubbl.us is a good tool! As to me I´m using www.mindmeister.com
Pageflakes I am using every day. Wouldn´t it be good to create a Pageflakes startsite for all members of this group?

Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on June 28, 2007 at 6:12pm

Here's one that i know I will use now that I've found it! http://www.dotsub.com - a site for adding subtitles to videos. After registering members upload their videos, other members transcribe and add subtitles in the language of their choice.
This site makes video accessible to all, well, that is providing they have access to the internet ;-)

In fact - I want to repeat a request that I posted on my blog... if you create videos, please consider uploading to dotSUB so that teachers and students everywhere will be able to enjoy them in their own language. Heres a link to "RSS in plain English" - pick your language from the dropdown menu.

Permalink Reply by Claude Almansi on July 6, 2007 at 2:38am

Hi Susan

What a coincidence - Yesterday, before reading your answer, I discovered DotSub.com through the "In plain English" videos about Web 2.0 tools at CommonCraft.com too - which I discovered in turn through Capire cos'è un social network: il video on the blog of Luca Mascaro - another member of our Noi Media work group about Web 2.0 tools :D

So I used DotSub to

- embed the subtitled-in-Italian version of "RSS in plain English" in CommonCraft spiega i wiki, RSS feed e reti sociali in video di poch... on the Noi Media blog.
- do the French subtitles for the Social Networking Commoncraft video.

DotSub is really extremely user-friendly. Even more so than Mojiti.com, but then Mojiti.com is really a commenting tool that can be used for subtitling, so I guess it's normal. In the intensive French workshop I organised last April, students used Mojiti to subtitle a French video in English and in schwytzertütsch (see CO Mojiti exercice on the wiki we used). Carmen, who works as a film director for the Swiss television, politely said it was an interesting tool, but I could see her frustration at its imprecision in setting start and end points for a given subtitle.

Other advantages of DotSub over Mojiti:
- you can put your video under a Creative Commons copyright license of your choice.
- if your subtitles get used commercially, you get paid something on the generated revenue (see their Translator Agreement for more info).