TeachersFirst:Web 2.0

Web 2.0:

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Introduction to Web 2.0 Grade 9 to 12 - Joshua Porter- 6720

MySpace, Xanga, FaceBook, Moodle, blogs, Flickr, wikis, podcasts, and more! Is geek-speak Greek to you? If you have not heard the term yet, you will soon: Web 2.0 is the term for the new generation of web-based collaborative tools and other uses of the web. Your students use them in MySpace and Xanga, but these are just two small pieces of a much larger picture. If you are technology-curious or want to know what your students are talking about, take the time to read this explanation by one of the movers and shakers of web 2.0. The discussion includes some tech jargon and some of tuhe underlying philosophy behind it--not a "light" read in some spots, but it makes sense. The page is actually created with one of web 2.0's tools: Squidoo.

In the Classroom:
Read for your own professional knowledge to stay ahead of the tech game, or share this site with mystified-but-curious parents and administrators, as well.You could even assign your computer students, tech ed classes, or techie students to use this site as a reference for a research project on the future of the web. Gifted classes would find it particulaly useful. The reading and conceptual level is definitely hgh school to adult.

K12Online Conference 2006 Grade K to 12 - K12Online Conference organizers- 6981

TeachersFirst Edge entry: for adventurous technology users. This first-time online conference for those interested in the use of web 2.0 tools in education generated instant excitement among ed-tech geeks and teachers alike. If you hear about it before the conference in Oct/Nov 2006, you can join in. Otherwise, the conference blog will stay online indefinitely for you to learn how other teachers are using these amazing tools: blogs, wikis, podcasts, and more.

circaVie (beta) Grade 3 to 12 - AIM Network- 8927

TeachersFirst EDGE entry: for slightly adventurous technology users. This online tool allows you to create an interactive multimedia timeline on a topic of your choice. You are able to use pictures, videos, or text to mark an event. Video and audio files hosted elsewhere (podcasts, TeacherTube videos, etc) can be included in your timelines. Pictures can be included by upload or by URL. Embed the "finished" timeline into a website or blog or share it via URL. See a sample created by our Edge review team. Viewers can comment on the events in your timelines, unless you have opted to keep the events "private." Free registration is required to create a timeline. This site requires Flash. Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.. NOTE: as of this review, circaVie is in beta, so there may still be some "glitchy" behavior from this tool. AOL has purchased this tool, so its longevity may be more protected than some other web 2.0 start-ups.

In the Classroom:
Skills needed: Join the site using an Instant Messenger Screenname or Open ID (both are free). You must know how to locate your photos and click to upload a photo or paste in the URL for an online photo/ video/ sound file to be included in a timeline. Note that photos and images included by URL do not raise the copyright issues of downloaded or saved images "taken" from web sources.

Safety/security concerns: Since all timelines are, to some degree, public, you will want to limit any student-created products to curriculum content rather than personal information or identifiable photos. The user information states that this is a "family friendly environment," but there are no guarantees. Use a single teacher GMail account to set up your OpenID account and avoid student email address or AIM screenname use, unless it is permitted by your school policies. If you plan to have students use this site, you will want to create multiple OpenID accounts using subaccounts of your GMail, since only one computer can be logged in per account at the same time. copyright (use URLs?)

Possible Uses: What a fabulous website to spark students' interest in creating a historical timeline. Have students work in teams to create timelines about various events in United States or World history. Have them make timelines to show the life cycle of a volcano, the water cycle, or the life of a famous scientist or author. Have them create a timeline of the plot of a novel, interspersed with the ways themes appear throughout the novel. If you read Dickens, be SURE to create a timeline of the many intertwined characters, such as Estella and Pip in Great Expectations! If you teach chemistry, have students create illustrated sequences explaining oxidation or reduction (or both). Younger students can create personal timelines, but there is the danger of "outsiders" seeing them.

Project the timelines on the screen or whiteboard in your classroom or embed them in your class wiki or blog for feedback and sharing. You can also share by exact URL using the link on Circavie.

Common Craft Grade K to 12 - Common Craft Productions- 8729

This is a TeachersFirst Edge Entry for ANYONE who wants to know more about new technologies. No special skills needed. Watch and learn. If you are embarrassed to say that you don't know what all the "new web 2.0" terms are all about, this one is for you (and probably for your students' parents, as well). Common Craft uses a very simple, visual method of explaining all the latest technologies so that anyone can understand, using short video clips narrated by a positive and respectful voice. The next time you hear someone talking about RSS feeds or some other new doo-dad, stop here first so you will know what they are talking about. Did you think you were the only one who did not know? Fear not. This site has incredible popularity because there are LOADS of people quietly questioning -- just like you. Videos require Flash. Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page..

In the Classroom:
Start by looking at "Most Viewed" and "Most Popular Right Now," but don't be afraid to search for other topics that have you wondering. You will definitely want to make this site a Favorite and tag is as "professional" information to keep you informed. Share it on your teacher web page to help out your parents, too!

podOmatic Grade 1 to 12 - podOmatic- 8094

TeachersFirst Edge Entry: for moderately adventurous technology users. Create simple audio podcasts using this online tool and the free space they provide. Simply put, this tool lets you create and place sound recordings online for people to listen to and/or download from a web site. The site itself is a "web 2.0," social networking style site, so some schools may have it blocked. Ask about unblocking just YOUR teacher account so you can have students access it from school.

What can it do? You can record sound directly with the microphone built or plugged into your computer and make it available for people to listen to online or download to their MP3 player. See and hear a sample we made for you. Some possible uses: You record your homework assignments or directions; students create "you are there" recordings as "eyewitnesses" to historical or current events; students create advertisements for concepts studied in class (Buy Dynamic DNA!); students write and record their own stories; language students or beginning readers record their fluency with reading passages; allow parents to hear their child's progress reading aloud,etc.

In the Classroom:
Skills needed: Join site (free), attach a mike or use a built-in computer mike, create the podcast by clicking a record button,(you may have to tell your computer to "allow" nonsecure items over and over), carefully select or SKIP many sharing mechanisms for safety's sake, limit any identifiable information with the podcasts, choose a background for your podcast page, share the link only with your students and parents. If you have students record podcasts as assignments, you may need multiple accounts because the free accounts have limited file space. An elementary teacher might have enough space for 25 students to keep a limited number of products, depending upon length. The site will tell you how much space each podcast takes and how much you have left.

Building Learners Project Grade 2 to 12 - TeachersFirst and TRIntuition- 9249

Follow the progress of 100 TeachersFirst members as they collaborate and use a safe web2.0 tool with the support of the tool developer and TeachersFirst's teacher-friendly team. The 100 participants receive free, premium pilot accounts to use TRintuition’s workBench and our support to help them build learners in their classrooms. These accounts allow teachers and students to create online collaborative projects using the workBench’s visually-rich and user-friendly tools, possibly even collaborating with classes from other schools.

Both teachers and students can build online or downloadable projects using the workBench. Each free premium pilot teacher account includes up to 45 student user accounts for access throughout 2008. Teachers who are part of the pilot project will be asked to complete at least one classroom-related, student- or teacher-created project (or as many classroom-related projects as you wish!) before November 30, 2008.

This blog documents the project and the idea-sharing from the announcement of the project start in April, 2008 and will remain online as a prototype for collaborative use of technology after the project completion.

In the Classroom:
Teachers who wish to join the project should read the details and sign-up from the blog. Learn more about the TRIntuition workBench from the TeachersFirst Edge review of this tool.

trIntuition's workBench Grade K to 12 - trIntuition- 8892

TeachersFirst Edge entry: for adventurous technology users. This amazing tool allows users to create web pages and full web sites without any special software, using online drag-and-drop tools. The resulting pages are polished and professional far beyond what you would expect from an online tool. The free version allows you to create single pages or full sites, including uploaded files, and save them. Viewers can access them online (via a unique URL you request) or from downloaded files you can easily create. See a sample our editors made here. The sample includes many ideas for ways to use this tool with your students. For better examples of the visual possibilities, look at the gallery of examples trIntuition workBench offers. They are superb! You and your students can access the tool from any online computer that has the necessary version of Flash: both Mac and Windows. A premium level of membership provides the ability to set up groups and collaborate, but it does cost money. The free version is still quite impressive. One distinct advantage of the ability to download a finished product is the fact that OFFline projects using copyrighted materials can still fall under Fair Use, assuming you limit the number of actual copies. You can also avoid any school policy concerns about posting student work online by keeping it within your school or network. To be able to use ALL tools, be sure you have Flash 9 or higher. Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.. If you are not allowed to install software, fear not. All but a very few tools and all finished products work in Flash 7. If you can see the TeachersFirst "What's New" on our home page, you can use the workBench!

In the Classroom:
Skills needed: Join the site (free). We recommend that you tour the examples, then start a new project and/or view the tutorials accessible through a question mark in the top left corner. Make sure you spot the ways to SAVE your project, view and use the site map that is generated for you automatically, and obtain both a URL and a downloaded copy of your project. Projects do NOT save automatically!
Safety and logistics issues: all users must set up an account with an email address. One email address is permitted to have multiple user names and passwords associated with it. If your students do not have school email (and most do not), you have three options:
1. Create a single, whole-class account using an "extra" email account of your own. Note that you do not need to be able to access the email from school to get started (no confirmation routine). This works fine for a few projects or a whole-class project.
2. Create multiple username accounts (one for each student or group), all using your "extra" email account as their email. This will send the username/password reminders to your email for record-keeping.
Remember that in the free version, each account is separate , so you cannot "share" images, etc. without uploading them to EACH account.
3. Create your own Gmail account with up to 20 subaccounts for each group of students (by code name or number) within your classes. Here is a blog post that tells how. If you teach multiple sections, use numbers and have each class period use the same set of numbers. There are "sabotage" risks. See the second page of our editor's trIntuition example for solutions to that. Such Gmail subaccounts will come in handy for just about any web 2.0 tool you use in class, so the effort is worth it. Just keep a record of WHO is using which account!

Possible uses for trIntuition workBench? Portfolios; college application "visual essays;" digital biodiversity logs (with digital pictures students take); online literary magazines; personal reflections in images and text; research project presentations; comparisons of online content, such as political candidates' sites or content sites used in research (compared for bias); science sites documenting experiments or illustrating concepts, such as the water cycle; "Visual" lab reports; Digital scrapbooks using images from the public domain and video and audio clips from a time in history -- such as the Roaring Twenties; Local history interactive stories; Visual interpretations of major concepts, such as a "visual" U.S. Constitution. Imagine building your own online library of raw materials for your students to create their own "webscreens" as a new way of assessing understanding: you provide the digital pictures, and they sequence, caption, and write about them (younger students) or you provide the steps in a project as a template, and they insert the actual content of their own. After a first project where you provide "building blocks," the sky is the limit on what they can do. Even the very young can make suggestions as you "create" a whole-class product together using an interactive whiteboard. Consider making a new project for each unit you teach so students can "recap" long after the unit ends.

A Race to Watch: Vote 2008: The Role of Technology and the Internet Grade 9 to 12 - PBS NewsHour- 8239

If you are looking for ways to begin to incorporate content associated with the upcoming 2008 Presidential elections, this site offers a lesson plan focused on the use of technology and the Internet in political campaigns. The speed with which technology changes means that no Presidential election in history will have used technology in the same way this one will. This lesson plan engages students in discussions about the use of blogs, podcasts, and other electronic media to appeal to younger voters.

Although the lesson plan is focused on the transcript of a NewsHour broadcast (you can access either a written transcript, a streaming video, or downloadable or streaming audio), there are good links to other resources: state-by-state analysis of Presidential primaries, biographies and coverage of each of the current candidates, and links to podcasts of NewsHour episodes.

In the Classroom:
Use the role of technology theme as you follow the elections for the next few months. Consider using it as the topic of a debate, an essay prompt, or even a simulation of a Congressional debate on campaign reform legislation. Students could use many of the links from this site to collect evidence to support their positions.

Swivel Grade 7 to 12 - - 7451

TeachersFirst Edge entry: For the most adventurous technology users. This new start-up web 2.0 tool (born Dec 2006) is "a place where curious people explore all kinds of data." Users register to join (free) to upload and/or manipulate data of all kinds: from comparisons of "What a Couple of Hundred Billion [dollars] can buy," to sports stats to election stats to less school-appropriate topics such as drinking. Why risk it? You will find terrific examples (and non examples) of how data can be shared visually, manipulated, and reported to help explain a concept. You can upload you own datasets, tag them, and see how others collaborate. Even simpler, you can browse graphs already made on the site, mark them as part of "your" stuff (Favorites) and visit them on a screen to discuss which graphs provide meaningful data and what they show, exactly.

In the Classroom:
Any teacher using this site should register under the his/her own name and limit use to areas that have been previewed before class to avoid inappropriate content. The best use is by marking items as Favorites and beginning your class visit in your Favorites to avoid "popular" content that might be awkward for parents, students, and you to justify in a classroom. If your students have been collecting data (sightings of migratory birds, lab experiment data, daily temperatures, etc), you can upload them and manipulate them on this site, comparing to other data uploaded by others. Teachers of math, statistics, science, even reading can use and teach data analysis from graphs. Share this one with your "geeky" teacher friends and figure it out together!

Skills required: join the site (free), browse datasets or upload your own (several formats possible), mark Favorites, create tags, create graphs from one or more datasets, all by "playing with the tools. No clear "Help" is available. There is a tour to give you the big picture of how the site works. Finally, you may want to link to one of your graphs (such as from a PowerPoint show) or display one on a web page.

Gliffy Grade K to 12 - - 7125

TeachersFirst Edge entry: for the moderately curious technology user. Research verifies the power of graphic organizers in promoting strong thinking skills and comprehension for all ages. Gliffy is a FREE online tool for creating graphic organizers without purchasing ANY software. Individuals or groups can create the organizers or the class can create them together, such as in a brainstorming session on a projector. You can assign students to "map" out a chapter or story or assign groups to create study guides using this tool collaboratively. Your students are certain to enjoy this tool and be forced to THINK in the process. You can export the graphic organizers to a blog or "publish" them on the web -- all for free. See an example of a published diagram/organizer made by our editors for more ideas.

In the Classroom:
Skills needed: join the Gliffy site (free), play with the tools and toolbars to create diagrams, access help and FAQ to collaborate, publish, or embed diagrams in your blog or other web page. Easy to medium difficulty. Note: collaborators need individual email accounts to gain access. If your students do NOT have personal email, you may want to create group email accounts on Yahoo or GMail for which only YOU know the password and can log in for groups to work in class in order to avoid the safety and school filtering issues of student email access. This would also be a great tool for group projects in YOUR grad classes!

Tabblo Grade K to 12 - Tabblo Inc.- 7079

TeachersFirst Edge entry: for the more adventurous technology user. Tabblo allows you to make very professional-looking posters, brochures, photo layouts using an online tool. Join the site for free and use photos you "borrow" from Flickr, other Tabblo users, or uploaded from your own digital image collection. The hitch: you cannot PRINT OUT the finished Tabblo results from the web page. You CAN share it online (they'll give you the link) or pay to have it printed. Why bother? Primary teachers may want to use this site as a way to share images of a classroom special event with parents (by email invitation to view it online). Since you can designate your images and finished Tabblo as PRIVATE, there is no safety concern. Older students can actually make Tabblos of their own from images you provide or images they take with a digital camera. Our editors made a sample for you to view online. We used their sample images, so the content does not really "make sense." Be sure to read the TEXT of the sample Tabblo for more ideas on how to use the tool in the classroom.

In the Classroom:
Use Tabblos for professional-looking, student-made projects (perhaps pay to print the BEST one?) to illustrate concepts, show steps in a process, document a lab experiment, Tech skills needed: ability to upload pictures (for which you OWN the rights), Tagging photos and finished Tabblos, reading step-by-step directions and Help to master simple drag and drop, template selection, text editing, etc involved in making the Tabblo, copy/paste of URL to share a Tabblo, careful reading of sharing options. Our advice: start small and think about management issues if you are allowing students to upload photos. It might be easiest to provide a set, tagged with your class name, for the first time you use this tool. The students are guaranteed to ask for another Tabblo activity!

Gridcosm Grade 6 to 12 - SITO- 6718

Create and collaborate with artists around the web using this online image montage and poetry tool. Each image is an ongoing compilation of other images, arranged in a grid. Add your own images and poetry or simply browse those made by others. Contributors join for free. The images often have surreal appearances and more avant-garde poetry. This site could be a dicussion starter in an art or creative writing class or a study in the diverse uses of web 2.0 collaboration in a computer class.

In the Classroom:
Share selected images on a projector as writing prompts or to open a "what is art" discussion. You could also use the images simply as examples of montages before a hands-on project, though this approach misses the clickable depths of each image. Teachers should be aware that this site does not limit image content, so some nudity may occasionally appear in the images. Check you art program's guidleines for such images and/or maintain teacher control over which ones are shown in class, if this will be a problem in your shcool.

Daily Grind Grade 1 to 12 - Mr. McNamar- 6632

This site offers one of the more articulate "teacher blogs" - usually interesting, seldom trivial, yet rarely whiny or preachy. Teachers who sometimes yearn for someone who can put things back in focus will often find this English teacher's posts helpful. This is an example of a blog for personal, rather than class use, with the intended audience being adults.

Podcasting Legal Guide Grade 6 to 12 - Creative Commons- 6630

Just because you can record a person's voice doesn't mean you can publish it on the web. Here's a site that outlines the basics of U.S. laws regarding copyright and publicity as they relate to user-created podcasts. You'll learn about which things are OK, which require permission, and other pointers to consider when creating podcasts for school or educational uses.

In the Classroom:
If your class is set to "publish" their recorded exploits, working through this site with them would be a great introduction to the "rules of the road" for journalists in general.