Resources for Teachers on Web 2.0 and other Applications

From ABC Wiki

1 General Resources for Web 2.0
2 Searching more effectively
3 Internet Safety and meaningful Web Evaluation
4 Podcasting
5 Blogging
6 RSS Feeds and Social Bookmarking
7 Wikis
8 Curriculum Tools and Resources
9 Other free Tools
10 Bringing it All Together

General Resources for Web 2.0

Most of these links provide information or PP presentations or Podcasts about wikis, blogs, rss feeds, podcasts etc - so if you are interested in any of these, click on the link and access the tool you want to find out more about.

Searching for web2.0 tools/ You need to click on the tags drop down menu near the top to access an area that interests you.
K-12 Educators Guide to Web 2.0
Dean Shareski's wiki on Web 2.0 applications. Each of his pages have links to video clips, tutorial, example websites, wikis or blogs and are worth exploring.
Hey Jude's blog on Web 2.0 applications
Wiki for Web 2.0 applications - click on download for resources and a PowerPoint presentation and also outline for more related links
Classroom 2.0. Classroom 2.0 is a social networking site for those interested in the practical application of computer technology (especially Web 2.0) in the classroom and in their own professional development.
Edtechtalk. Edtechtalk is a webcasting network of educators dedicated to helping those involved in educational technology explore, discuss, and collaborate in its use.
Chris Smith's links to Web 2.0 resources and tools. This site has lots of links to the websites of Web 2.0 applications, tools etc and also to videos and podcasts Web 2.0 presentations from various experts around the world.
Videos on Web 2.0 applications and tools
Alan November's document covers Information Literacy, Search Practices and Web 2.0 tools
On learning in the social networking age video.

Searching more effectively

Apart from the huge list of search engines available you can use Google news and Google blogs to help refine your searches

http://blogsearch.google.com/ - finds blogs; use advanced search to narrow down your choices further
http://news.google.com - finds news articles; use advanced search to narrow down your choices further by selecting a particular Newspaper, location etc.
Feedster is a Search engine for RSS feeds, which constantly monitors the world of blogs. It also includes an image search.
Del.icio.us is an online social bookmarking website where you can search other people's favourites.
Technorati is a website for searching using tags.
If you want to search a particular website for something and cannot find what you are looking for, here is a better way. Go to Altavista and then search the site you are interested in by typing host: and then the url of the site you want to search (eg abc.edu.sv), followed by a space and then the subject you are looking for. So host:abc.edu.sv assessment for example, would give all links to anything about assessment on our website. When I did this I got 56 pages (each with about 10 links)to webpages on our website with the word assessment in it!!
Grokker This website acts like a search engine which quickly converts data, documents, records, and search results into contextually relevant, graphical knowledge maps.
wikimindmap WikiMindmap helps you create a auto-mindmap of the wiki topic of your choice. It searches any term on Wikipedia and automatically creates a structured and easy understandable overview of the Wikipedia page of that term.
How Google searches and how to alter this: [1]

Other useful sites are

Ask.com and for younger students Ask for Kids
Answers.com
Noodletools

Internet Safety and meaningful Web Evaluation

Presentation by Brian Mull. This wiki formed a presentation given by Brian Mull at the BLC in 2007 and covers many aspects of online safety, including using sites like MySpace carefully.
Focus on safety in social networking for sites like MySpace etc
Wayback Machine This software allows you to look at old versions of websites - we should make students aware that what they put on any website (like MySpace) can usually be retrieved even if the site is later deleted.
Mark Warner's presentation about Internet Awareness and Safety. The wiki and PP and course outline can be accessed here
These video clips are short first person vignettes that cover various aspects of online safety. The videos are well made and come with lessons and discussion starters geared to middle school and high school grades.
isafe I-SAFE incorporates classroom curriculum with dynamic community outreach to empower students, teachers, parents, law enforcement, and concerned adults to make the Internet a safer place.

Podcasting

Bob Sprangle's portal on podcasting
Podcasting Toolbox
Educational Podcast Network. This site was created by David Warlock and is an effort to bring together into one place, the wide range of podcast programming that may be helpful to teachers looking for content to teach with and about, and to explore issues of teaching and learning in the 21st century.
Educational podcasting for teaching and learning. This UK site is for educators, parents and carers everywhere. This is the first and best UK directory to locate quality podcasts from over 400 carefully selected podcast channels for educational use - ideal for teaching and learning activities with children, young people and educational professionals.
gcast This website allows you to create an account to be able to record your podcast via a toll-free call from any phone. Never even touch a computer!
Podcasting tutorial
Podcasting in Plain English Video

Tools for Podcasting in Windows

Audacity. This link goes to a wiki about using Audacity in Education. Audacity is software for recording and editing audio files but you need to install the lame library mp3 add on. Download Lame here. Instructions for installing the add-on can be found here. Apple users have their own software already installed called GarageBand.
Picasa for organisng your photos and sharing them on the web.
MovieMaker for creating and editing movies.
List of links to podcasts from Chris Smith's website
Odeo: Podcasting via the web Library of millions of MP3s and 1000's of audio channels—podcasts, music, and more. Listen, download, it's FREE
Garageband the Apple software has a very simple podcast component

Examples of Podcasts in Schools

Mabry School podcasts. This is a school that has really embraced Web 2.0 technologies and here is a list of school podcasts/
3rd Grade Students explaining how they make their podcasts

Blogging

Blogging in Plain English
Mark Wagner's Movie on Blogging. The first 10 minutes is a bit of a ramble so you could miss that bit. The video very clearly explains how to write to a blog and uses Edublog (which is hosted by Wordpress - the blogging software we use). This video clip comes from Introduction from K12 Online.
A wiki in progress on Blogging from Mark Wagner
Bob Sprangle's portal on blogging
A PowerPoint Presentation about 25 styles of Blogging
Ways of using Blogs with Students
Support Blogging!. SupportBlogging! is a wiki that has been set up to provide an opportunity for students, teachers, administrators, parents, and others to help promote an understanding of the benefits of educational blogging. Here is a huge list of resources on this site. Also here is another long list of class, student and teacher blogs

Examples of Blogs in Schools

Mabry School Teachers' Blogs . All teachers at Mabry School have to have their own blog and write to it at least once each week.

Setting up a Blog

Edublogs. The video in [1] above goes very clearly through how to write to a blog and manage your blog so it really is worth listening to but it is long. This is the same as Wordpress too so very useful for all of us with school blogs.

Blogger and Blogspot are two more sites offering easy to use and free blog hosting.

RSS Feeds and Social Bookmarking

Intro video to RSS. Scroll down the page to watch a short but very clear video called RSS in Plain English giving an introduction to RSS made by Common Craft. An excellent introduction if you know nothing about creating RSS feeds.
An Introduction to Social Bookmarking from Common Craft,another excellent short video introducing you to Social Bookmarking, covering Del.icio.us, tagging and sharing. Del.icio.us is an online bookmarking facility that allows you to share your Favourites and to search the Favourites of other Del.icio.us users.
A video on using Del.icio.us. This is fairly short and clearly explains how to set up a del.icio.us account and how to use it. Scroll down to access the link to the video. At the bottom of the page there are links to more advanced tutorials for using social bookmarking.
How to set up Google Reader as your RSS feed reader
K12 Online Presentation on Web 2.0 applications. This is a four part series mainly to do with effective use of rss feeds, with social bookmarking, tagging etc.
A Wiki about Tagging for Teachers from k12wiki. Tagging is an open and informal method of categorizing that allows users to associate keywords with online content (webpages, bookmarks, pictures & posts). If content is tagged well then it will be easier to find it when you search for it.
Chris Smith's links to RSS tutorials

Wikis

An Introduction to using Wikis. This is a really clear and short video clip to help you understand about wikis.
Mark Wagner's video on using Wikis called "Wiki while you work". This video clip is linked from K12 Online Conference
A great wiki from eudtechlife.com with links to workshops and other wikis
Educational Wikis Site. A wiki with links to articles and resources for wikis in education.
Heavy Metal Umlaut is a video showing the making of a wiki and how it develops.
Pbwiki tutorial from Atomic Learning
PBWiki tutorials [2]
Wikispaces tutorial or watch these video tutorials for wikspaces

Curriculum Tools and Resources

A presentation on Using Google Earth effectively. This wiki has lots of resources for Humanities in particular.
A great link to news in different languages
YouTube for video clips on any topic
Teacher Tube - video clips for teachers
PageFlakes- this is an excellent resource for putting resources all together. For example, a teacher could collect rss feeds and place them all on a single PageFlake page. This could have links to websites, blogs or wikis, podcasts, youtube clips etc for students to use when researching a particular topic. For an example go to Will Richardson's Home Page This is a PageFlake page. You do need to register for access, but it is free.
Flickr is an online site that allows users to upload, tag, and share images. This next site provides links and "How to" notes for using Flickr]
nvu A complete Web Authoring System for Linux Desktop, Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver.
Scratch Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.
ZcubesIn this website you can seamlessly browse, search, edit, paint, draw, hand-write, watch, listen, publish, type, print, network, teach, learn, and work.

Other free Tools

slideshare
Feedburner - Turn your blog or other RSS link into a true podcast. Compatible with all aggregators, including iTunes. Simple tracking stats.
This website converts rss to Java
A free online file conversion
This converts blogs to podcasts or word to speech. Talkr provides a service that allows you to listen to your favorite text-only news sources rather than read them. If you can point us to an RSS or Atom feed (a machine-readable version of your favorite blog or news source) we will convert that feed from text to speech.
This also converts word to speech
This site explains about copyright and how to share, reuse, and remix — legally. Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved]. Click here to read about the 7 things you should know about Creative Commons
This software is used for capturing screens, but we have other tools like Snag-it
Edubuntu Edubuntu is an officially supported derivative of Ubuntu that is customised for Education use that contains a large number of educational applications
Sourceforge.net SourceForge.net is the world's largest Open Source software development web site, hosting more than 100,000 projects. It has the largest repository of Open Source code and applications available on the Internet, and hosts more Open Source development products than any other site or network worldwide.
Open Source resources This page contains several links to various open source resources you might find interesting.

Bringing it All Together

The six jobs described below outline concrete ways that your students can make valuable contributions to their learning community. While these jobs can be successfully implemented individually, it is bringing them together in harmony where, I believe, you might find the most success in developing a powerful global learning team.