Start Page) with my computer students this school year and it has made ALL the difference with collaboration and communication in my classroom.
2. Gmail. I love this web based email system and the fact that I can access it from any computer. Not only do you get tons of storage but I like the way it keeps the threaded conversations together. Gmail chat is awesome and the new Video Chat is very cool.
3. Google Docs. Google docs are great for collaborating and sharing information with others. You must invite friends to participate in your documents but it’s so easy to edit ALL AT THE SAME TIME!!!.
4. New to the list this year is Google Reader. I used to use Bloglines but when it was bought out and then stopped updating some of my feeds, I switched to Google Reader. I also love reading blog posts on my new G1 phone.
5. iGoogle Ok, ok, so I love of all the of the Google products - but I do use them and find them easy to use. iGoogle is a personalized page (which I make as my own homepage) that you can customize with all kinds of widgets like: weather, calendar, CNN news, Google Reader (RSS), Gmail notifier, jokes, etc…
6. Twitter - Another new tool this year is Twitter. I have come to depend on it for sharing collaborative projects and keeping the pulse on what’s happening in the Blogosphere.
7. del.icio.us. I can’t believe how much I depend on this social bookmarking tool to remember sites I have visited but also for sharing cool sites with my friends. Now I don’t need to be that annoying friend who always sends emails recommending websites (I can’t help myself) - if I find a site and know my friend’s del.icio.us name I can tag the site as: for:ccassinelli and then when that user goes to their del.icio.us account they can add my favorite to theirs. This is very helpful for group projects!
8. flickr. This web-based photo sharing site is awesome for uploading photos to share with friends. I like how you can create different albums and tag photos for easy sorting. I also love snooping through my friend’s albums too!
9. Google Sites - lets you create simple, secure group websites. Share information with a few people, a whole organization, or the entire world.
10. Audacity. This easy to use FREE audio editing software is easy to use for podcasting and editing audio files. You will need the LAME Mp3 encoder if you want to export your audio files at MP3 instead of WAV - but it’s easy to download and install.
Off the list this year: Bloglines
Still like:
* Voicethread – A great tool for encouraging collaboration in your classroom. Upload photos and add text, audio or voice comments with a web cam. My new personal favorite way to get students to share comments with each other.
* Wikispaces. I’ve already mentioned my love of wikis i for collaboration and easy editing - wikis are the way to go. - but with the addition of Sites to the Google suite - I don’t use Wikispaces as much as I used to. I also love the fact that Wikispaces gives FREE wikis to teachers. Thanks for the support!
* Moodle. I started using Moodle this last year with a few of my computer classes but will use this open-source course management system with all my classes this year. It’s easy to use, has built in blogging and modules (quizzes, journals, docs) that make it easy to keep all class documents in one area.…
rict?
What criteria should we be searching out?
I'm starting a wiki page for this here.
Feel free to add to the wiki by joining (also gives me a chance to check out Wetpaint)
a copy of wiki post:
Requirements
1. ease of use
monitoring / private? / grouping
2. wiki functionality
3. blogging
4. downloading / archiving
Do these fit? How?
Ning
Wetpaint
Wikispaces
PBwiki
Edublogs
Blogmeister
other blogging software: Lifetype / b2evolution / more
Any help would be appreciated - or at Newlearning, too.…
Added by Sharon Betts at 4:12pm on November 4, 2007
icrosoft Excel and Powerpoint in grades 4-8. I used to use HyperStudio until it was incompatible with OS X on Intel Macs. I have since purchased MediaBlender, but do not use it to the degree that I did with HyperStudio. We use Mavis Beacon Teaches typing from fifth grade and above. GarageBand and iMovie are tools I use in 6-8.
I am moving toward use a lot of open source software: Scratch (5-8), The Gimp (6-8), and NVU (8). I enjoy the flexibility of Wikispaces and Classblogmeister for giving my students access to collaboration on the Internet.
I try to keep a wiki up-to-date with my various projects and plans if you'd like to take a look.…
studies at a rural school in Nebraska. (Are there any other kinds of school in Nebraska??!!!???)
My students get a little nervous around technology so I am breaking them in slowly. I am also learning so this is OK with me. I am having my students write a biographical entry in the class wiki. (www.valtsvirtual.wikispaces.com -----I think it is still viewable to nonmembers.) I'm teaching online classes as well so the wiki is designed to bring my f2f and online students together.
I also set up a Ning for the students. I don't know if that is an option for you, but it is worth looking into. Since you are a teacher you can have the advertisements removed at no cost. Same thing goes for the wikispaces wikis.
I blog at www.bethstill.edublogs.org Do you have one to use to communicate with other educators?
Good luck!…
The first is for the novella "Kein Schnaps für Tamara" and is at Scratchpad. This was my first entrance with a wiki and it was voluntary. One of my students' test scores were much better than normal because of this wiki. It helped him understand the story line and characters better. This really confused me because the wiki is in English and the test was all in German.
Our 2nd wiki is also over a book we're reading and it is currently in progress. I'm requiring my students to do the wiki and it is mostly in German. You can find this one at wikispaces. Please note that some of my students love to format and there doesn't appear to be any uniformity in the looks of the wiki. Right now we are working on adding content. I don't know how the finished product will look.…
Added by Julie Baird at 3:35am on February 3, 2009
ocument. I have included 2 links: Vicki Davis on educational wikis and Teacher Paperless on Google Docs. If you want to create a structure for a project, add some resources, instructions, and have pages that groups can personalize, I'd go for the wiki. You can get an educator's account from wikispaces and be ad free. If you want individuals to be able to make contributions to the same document at the same time, try Google Docs. You also might want to take a look at Grou.ps which is an open source social networking site that can be used with students under 13 and has a wiki capacity. My main advice is think carefully about what you want to do with your project first, and choose the tool to fit the job.
SueH
Wilkes IM Grad Assistant…
my hundreds of bookmarks and its research tools and WordPress - several blogs to share information with teachers and students.
With students - Wikispaces so we can have a space where we all have ownership and can collaborate and Moodle. Moodle for providing information mostly, though the forums have been used a little at school.
As a Mathematics teacher I love all the excellent free resources out there - I'll second Rashmi's earlier recommendation of GeoGebra - there is also a version available with younger students in mind. There are many online resources available for learning about GeoGebra.
…
page to view it. There's too much potential for changing channels into a very non-educational room if we do it on their site. Not to mention, many schools have UStream blocked, so they couldn't watch along.
I know how to embed the channel into a website, but wasn't sure about the WikiSpaces wiki. Any advice now (or even a few months down the road) would be appreciated.
Incidentally, if anyone's interested, we're each taking either a liberal or conservative stance to 8 different Presidential Campaign issues. The kids in my school took the liberal side and CT is taking the conservative side. It's diametrically opposed to how each group really feels about the issues, so it's sure to be a terrific learning experience for all.…
Added by Ginger Lewman at 7:54am on January 12, 2008
e, Guidelines, and Effective Practice from Around the Globe, was published by the Commonwealth of Learning in July 08 and is available as a free download in pdf format from their website.
We are now working on a 2nd Edition and invite your participation. It will be published by the Commonwealth of Learning to coincide with PCF6 in India 2010 from 24 - 28 November. http://www.col.org/progServ/panComm/Pages/pcf.aspx
For participation details, a list of contributors, and for further information, visit the Book Project on Wikispaces.
Note that you do not need to join the wiki to view the content, but to edit pages, participate and collaborate you will need to join the wiki.…
Added by Sandy Hirtz at 11:19am on September 5, 2009
es Against the Blind:
Baltimore, Maryland (March 15, 2011): The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the oldest and largest nationwide organization of blind people in the United States, today requested that the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, investigate civil rights violations committed by New York University (NYU) and Northwestern University against blind faculty and students. The NFB made the request because the schools have adopted technology that is not accessible to the blind. Both universities have recently adopted Google Apps for Education as a means of providing e-mail and collaboration tools to students and faculty. Google Apps for Education is a free suite of hosted communication and collaboration applications that includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs, and Google Sites. Each of these applications contains significant accessibility barriers for blind people utilizing screen access technology, which converts what is on the computer screen into synthesized speech or Braille. A similar request for investigation has been filed against four Oregon public school districts that are using Google Apps. The complaints allege violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. For further illustration of this matter, please view a demonstration of screen access technology used by the blind and the accessibility barriers that a blind person experiences using Google Apps. ...
(my bold, and btw the videos linked in the demonstration of screen access technology page are great if you don't have a screen reader and want to know how it is to have to use one, especially with Web 2.0 apps (though they are about Google Apps, several issues illustrated obtain for other apps too). The press release continues:
Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: “Given the many accessible options available, there is no good reason that these universities should choose a suite of applications, including critical e-mail services, that is inaccessible to blind students. Worse yet, according to recent data more than half of the American higher education institutions that are outsourcing e-mail to third-party vendors plan to deploy this suite, even though they know that it cannot be used by blind students. Nor can these universities claim ignorance of their legal obligations, since the United States Department of Justice and the United States Department of Education have specifically warned all university presidents against the adoption of inaccessible technology. The National Federation of the Blind will not tolerate this unconscionable discrimination against blind students and faculty and callous indifference to the right of blind students to receive an equal education. We urge these higher education institutions to suspend their adoption of Google Apps for Education until it is accessible to all students and faculty, not just the sighted, or to reject Google Apps entirely.”
Now the warning from the DoJ and DoE to all university (and college, btw) presidents mentioned by Dr Maurer arose from the NFB v Arizona State University case over the latter's adoption of the Kindle, which is inaccessible to the blind too. And it says - among many other things that would apply to Google Apps too:
...It is unacceptable for universities to use emerging technology without insisting that this technology be accessible to all students. ...
So rushing to follow the example of those Oregon schools might not be such a hot idea after all. Apart from other issues with Google Apps, like losing track of the real author when folks start making copies of a shared document to their own account, then renaming it and resharing it with someone who can in turn do the same.
So I was wondering whether the wikispaces offers for K-12 and for higher education teachers might not cover the needs of some of you, if combined with a free and for free OpenOffice suite. Wikispaces has inside messaging that might answer your e-mailing requests, and you can upload spreadsheets and slideshows made with OpenOffice (though, granted, you can't edit them online there). And the wikispaces pages themselves are quite decent for text editing - actually better than traditional office suites text editors, one might argue, in that they encourage rational structuring over futile surface decoration.
One query remains: I am not 100% sure about the accessibility of wikispaces either. However, they have been offering at least the K-12 solution (as well as paid solutions for educational institutions - see their pricing page), for years now. And I haven't heard of inaccessibility complaints about them so far. Whereas there had been many concerning the inaccessibility of Google Docs and Google Apps for years before the NFB finally decided to ask the DoJ to investigate the matter this week.…