My favorite Web 2.0 tools

Web 2.0 is the next evolution of the internet. It is taking the software and storage off of failing computer hard drives and out of the hands of major software companies and putting the storage and software on the web for all users to have without discs. Web 2.0 is harnessing the power of internet and making software and files truly mobile for all users. With the software being online, a user merely needs to log in to an account on a website to use the program and access files they may be working on. It also allows for collaboration across multiple users accessing the same files. The potential benefit to Web 2.0 for the classroom is that there are a lot of sites and tools available for classroom use and students will have access to programs that teachers are using in the classroom at their house without buying software; and with Google Docs and the family of Google software, there is virtually no need to carry disks around any longer, everything is saved online.

There are some issues with putting everything on the web though...the variation of the programs is not that large yet. Sure, there is the Google family, but in scope the Google application pale in available functions to Microsoft office, or the iWork bundle from Apple. It is a great concept, but not fully fleshed out yet, and certainly not competitive for creating good looking documents or completing higher level functions within a spreadsheet. To do that, the student (or teacher) will still have to have one of the other suites of software. The other big issue is access! There are plenty of school districts around the U.S. and a few schools here in Salem that do not have mass access to computers within the classroom. At McKay, there is one computer lab in the building and one in the library, both are booked quite often for the technical classes. In the classroom that I will be teaching in, there are no computers for student use, they have no mobile lab and not every student has home access to the internet. Access is still an issue! Even asking students who has access to the internet could be alienating for those who are in poverty or who don't have homes.

Sure, these are great tools to use in a classroom where everyone has access.

The tools that I find most useful on Web 2.0 are:

VoiceThread.com: This site provides a unique way to make powerpoint slides, photo galleries, or presentations more interactive. Simply upload your files and pictures and insert audio over the top just by signing into your account. You can call in comments, write them with text, insert audio with the microphone on your pc or mac. There is also an option to doodle over the top of the pictures or slides. This has great classroom uses because it could be used by a whole group to assemble a presentation from their home pcs and share their thoughts and topics over the internet instead of having to meet in a group. For a teacher, you could prepare a whole lecture and time the speaking over the top of the slides, you could put up pictures of a historical event and have the voice of an interview over the top, you could also put up pictures of famous authors and then have different voices read excerpts from their work over the top.

tinyurl.com: the pain about having free everything is that you get a lot of website names that are long explanations of where the host server is like http://www.tripod.com/dallasmyers/sites/home.htm is a lot to put on the class syllabus. the better site name would tinyurl.com/dallasmyers. Tinyurl.com does just that: shortens those large and often unnecessary urls into something much more manageable. The applications for this site within the context of the classroom is really to make links more manageable and easier to pass along to students.