February 2010 • Volume 13 • Number 3 • Pages 8-9
Tools for Schools:
What's New with Web 2.0
Howie DiBlasi
What an exciting time to be in education.
Technology is changing at such a rapid rate that it is difficult for educators to keep up with the latest digital tools. Our students are miles ahead of us in that respect. They are as comfortable using cell phones, creating YouTube videos, instant messaging, blogging, and connecting through social networking as we are with getting our information from newspapers and catching up with friends over coffee.
I hope that we, as educators, can rise to the challenge of providing our students with the technology tools they need to be successful in today's classroom and in tomorrow's workplace. We need to prepare our students for the 21st century jobs that require global awareness, communication, teamwork, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, and data mining.
If we are to change our classrooms to reflect the 21st century, we need to adopt and incorporate the 21st century models for school. In short, we must make sure students are able to
- Retrieve, organize, and manage information efficiently and then evaluate the quality, relevance, and usefulness of that information.
- Know more about the world around them.
- Use digital technology and communication tools to teach and learn in a 21st century context.
- Think outside the box; be creative and innovative.
- Use interpersonal and self-directional skills effectively.
- Learn academic content through real-world examples.
One way we can prepare our students for a successful future is to incorporate Web 2.0 tools into our instruction. How does Web 2.0 differ from the "regular" Web? Web 2.0 is a two-way medium, in that in addition to reading information on the Web—which was about all we could do until recently—we can produce content as well, making it more of a conversation.
Because two key elements of Web 2.0 are collaboration and communication, the very nature of student work changes when teachers incorporate these tools in the classroom. Students are able to not only learn from their teachers, but learn from and teach their peers in their classroom, across the country, and even around the world. They can't help but become active participants in their own learning.
So what is the best way to get started? The following is a list of my favorite Web 2.0 tools. All of the Web 2.0 suggestions are tied to the 21st century skills listed earlier and are designed to integrate with any curriculum.
Collaborative Curriculum Resources
The School 2.0 eToolkit provides a "big picture" look at Web 2.0, including plenty of resources to get you started. www.etoolkit.org
Global Connections ePals is a social network optimized for K–12 learning. More than 11 million students and teachers from 191 countries are building skills, enhancing learning, and collaborating on projects with ePals. www.epals.com
Curriki is an online community of educators, students, and education experts who are working together to support the development and free distribution of quality educational materials on an open source platform. www.curriki.org
ThinkQuest, from Oracle, is a learning platform on which teachers and students create learning projects and then share them with students around the world. www.thinkquest.org
HotChalk is a free curriculum management, content sharing, professional development, and social networking service that makes teaching and learning easier. The service automates daily repetitive tasks like grading and making assignments, facilitates teacher-student communication, provides a library of proven projects and lesson plans, and promotes discussion among educators. www.hotchalk.com
Ed.VoiceThread is a Web-based communications network for K–12 students and educators to create and collaborate on projects across the curriculum. http://voicethread.com
Learning Communities
Ning allows people to join in and create networks based on common interests. It's a powerful way for educators to connect as a learning community. Check out one such community at http://toolsfortheclassroom.ning.com
Classroom 2.0 is a social network for educators interested in integrating Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education. www.classroom20.com
Twitter allows users to share news, resources, questions, and answers quickly. It can be a great source of professional development and teacher collaboration. www.twitter.com
RSS makes keeping up with what's happening on the Internet much easier. Subscribe to your favorite education blog or news site and the content goes right to your designated reader such as Google Reader (www.google.com/reader) so you can access all your favorite content at one time. Get the full rundown of how this works at www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english
WiZiQ is a Web-based platform teachers and students can use to teach and learn. Users create and share online educational content and tests and connect with people who share similar interests. The application offers two-way audio, text chat, whiteboard, PowerPoint, and PDF document-sharing capabilities. www.wiziq.com
In the Classroom
Diigo is a social annotation and bookmarking service that students and teachers can use to bookmark websites and add highlights and notes to them. It's a great tool for research. www.diigo.com
del.icio.us is another social bookmarking site that students and educators can use to save bookmarks and organize them with tags. Users can also take advantage of their del.icio.us network, which allows them to add friends to their account and keep track of bookmarks their friends save. http://del.icio.us
Storytelling Alice is a programming environment designed to motivate middle grades students (particularly girls) to learn to program computers by creating short 3D animated movies. www.alice.org/kelleher/storytelling/index.html
Wordle turns text into a word cloud, then picks out the most common words and makes them more prominent in size. www.wordle.net.
To see Wordle in action, here's a link to an interactive page with word clouds of all the presidential inauguration addresses with a cool timeline feature: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/17/
washington/20090117_ADDRESSES.html
Glogster EDU is, in effect, a personal Web page complete with embedded media links, sound, and video capabilities. Students can work with Glogster individually or as a group to create presentations and share information. www.glogster.com/edu
Google Docs allows students and teachers to take notes online, save them, and even send them to their peers for collaborative projects. http://docs.google.com
EtherPad is another program that promotes collaboration. Users can share notes, store revisions, and synchronize with others in real time. http://etherpad.com
Podcast.com provides a huge listing of podcasts from all over the Web. They'll be able to find just about anything they are looking for. www.podcast.com
Gabcast helps educators and students create podcasts and hosting sites. Students can even use their cell phones to record the podcast for download. http://gabcast.com
Bubbl.us is a flash-based mind mapping tool that allows users to chart out their thoughts in a colorful format, share them with friends, or embed them in blogs, websites, and e-mails. www.bubbl.us
Just Do It
Where to start now that you have all these resources at your fingertips? The important thing is to do just that—get started. There are more resources available than you can imagine to help you prepare your students for success in the 21st century. Take a moment to visit www.toolsfortheclassroom.com
Oh, did I mention the one-stop shop of tools for teachers? You can browse links and explanations for more than 400 Web 2.0 sites: http://simplespark.com/catalog/? search=education&page
=all&PHPSESSID=9e125d6e2368239a367bda60dbc3f45b
Howie DiBlasi, former IT director for the Durango School District in Colorado, is a speaker and presenter specializing in technology for 21st century learning. E-mail: howie@frontier.net
Copyright © 2010 by National Middle School Association