PBWiki

A wiki is software that allows multiple users to create, edit, and link web pages easily.  There are many applications for Wiki's in classroms, and it is one of the most powerful tools for the Read/Write Web.   "Wiki" is the Hawiian word for "quick", and the coolest tool to create Wikis quickly and easily is Peanut Butter Wiki (PBWiki), which makes the design process as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich.  A wiki is one of the best ways to empower every student to collaborate and participate in class projects or assignments using technology. Wiki's are a great way for teachers to communicate with students, and to allow studenets to communicate with others across the Internet.  Wiki's are more complex than other communication websites like blogs or forums.  Wiki's allow users to create, publish, comment, converse, post ideas, respond, share, edit, collaborate, and most importantly, engage.  Listed in the table below are some examples of educational wikis and a set of files that can be downloaded that contain simple directions for creating your own wiki.

 

 

Examples of Educational Wikis	Wiki Help Files - Download to PDF
Sweet Home Adminisrative PLC Wiki	Building a Collaborative Classroom
Room 15 Wiki	How To Create Your Own Wiki
Miss B's Russian Page	Wiki Q & A
The Chauncy School	Wiki FAQ
Using Wiki in Education	Sharing a Calendar
Classroom 2.0 WIki	Adding Plug-Ins
Math 12 Advanced Portfolio	Creating a Chat Room
Welker's Wikinomics Page	Wiki Security
Enviornmental Science - Go Apes
Salute to Seuss
Curriki
Wyoming 5th Grade Math
EduTech Wiki

 

 

 

 

Blogger

 A blog, shorthand for web log, is much like a personal diary web page.  In simple terms a blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis.  New stuff shows up at the top of the blog page, so visitors can read the newest posts first.  People who visit a blog can usually post comments in response to the stuff that has been written.  There are two websites that offer to host blogs for free, and which provide easy to use graphical tools (templates, custom colors & fonts, drag & drop page elements) to create blogs - Blogger and Edublogs.  The table below lists some ways teachers can use blogs in the classroom and some examples of educational blogs.

 

 

Nine Ways to Use Blogs When Teaching	Examples of Educational Blogs
1.  Post materials and resources by uploading.	Sweet Home BOE Blog
2.  Host online discussions with your class or others.	Extreme Biology
3.  Create a class publication with multimedia elements.	Weblogg-Ed
4.  Replace your class newsletter digitally.	Ed Tech Journeys
5.  Get your students blogging by creating a hub.	Allanah's Appleby Showcase
6.  Share your lesson plans or ideas with your team or other teachers.	Thinking 2.0
7.  Get feedback from students (or others) and give feedback to others.	Woodchurch Science
8.  Integrate multimedia of all descriptions on a web page.	The Blog of Proximal Development
9.  Create a fully functional website.	Mrs. Amy's Preschool Press
	The Virtual Staffroom
	A Library by Any Other Name
	Technorati
	Mr. Teacher
	A Difference

 

 

 

 

Podcasts

Podcasts are radio and TV-style shows you can download from the Internet.  You can download free podcasts from the iTunes Store.  You can also subscribe to podcasts (for free) so that new episodes are automatically downloaded as they become available.  Using the Garage Band software on your laptop or in the new computer labs, you or your students can also create podcasts.   There are three basic types of podcats, which are described in the chart below:

 

 

Podcast Type	Description
Audio Podcast	Consist only of audio - like a radio show.
Enhanced Podcast	Audio podcasts that have images added to them, usually as chapter markers or PDF files.
Video Podcast	Consist of video & audio.  Can be created in QuickTime Pro on your computer.

 

 

Jaye Keyes, a technology integration consultant for Apple Computer, has put together a great web site on Podcasting in Education that explains the three types of podcasts and provides tips and hints for how to use them in the classroom.  She has also complied an easy to use Podcast Tutorial web site that is updated after each of her presentations. 

 

Use this like to access an Apple tutorial on how to create a Podcast using Garage Band.

 

 

A very cool sample of podcast technology is the Grammer Girl site.  Click the link to view the site.

 

 

 

   Diigo  &    del.icio.us

 

Before Web 2.0, when you discovered a really good website, you bookmarked it in your browser so that you could quickly visit it again in the future. This worked well for the most part. However, a couple of problems arose with this method of bookmarking. When you bookmarked a site on one computer, it was only available on that specific computer. Change computers, and you lose your bookmarks. Another problem with this method of bookmarking is that you couldn't easily share your bookmarks with other people. And other people couldn't share their bookmarks with you.

 

In the Read/Write Web there are a number of web sites that allow you to organize all of your favorite bookmarks in a convenient online location, and easily share them with others.  The concept of social bookmarking allows you to set up an account with a web-based bookmarking site, such as del.iciou.us or diigo, and add new websites to this account as needed.  Your bookmarks are stored online, so they are accessible and editable on any computer.  You can also share your bookmarks with others.  The social bookmarking sites use the concept of "tagging" to help organize your bookmarks.  When you add a web site tyou your social bookmarks, you assign it a tag.  The tags are single keywords that you create to help you categorize a website.  You can assign as many tages to as website as you like.  As you add more website to your social bookmarks, you will use many of the same tags, and at times you will continue to create new tags.  You can then quickly find specific websites by searching through your tag list and seeing which sites fall under the categories you assigned them.

 

Diigo takes social bookmarking a step further by including the concept of "groups" and annotation.  With Diigo, you can highlight portions of a web page in different colors, and add sticky note references.  You can  share the annotations with a group you create, thereby allowing further collaboration.  Group members can view your annotations, make their own, or link to the original website.  A set of flash tutorials on Diigo are available by clicking the link.

 

 

Dave Ehrhart, a social students teacher in York, PA., has posted a great screencast on how to use Diigo as a research tool with students when they are assigned Internet content to read.  You can view the Screencast on Diigo by clicking the link.

 

 

 

  RSS 

RSS (really simple syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as breaking news headlines, blog entries, podcasts, or other information on web sites.  In order to view RSS content you need software called an RSS reader.  There are dozens of free software products that display RSS, but the easiest for you to use is the Safari web browser on you laptop.  You can subscribe to RSS feeds by clicking the RSS button that appears on the left side of the URL indicator in Safari.  The button looks like this: 

 

Teachers and students can use RSS feeds to simplify searches and to keep abreast of current events in news, politics, and professional organizations.  RSS provides connections to the outside world for students.  Students (or teachers) can set up their own blogs as RSS feeds and they can subscribe to other student or teacher RSS feeds. The embedded YouTube video below provides an overview of RSS:

 

You can view RSS pages one at a time, or have Safari present several on a single page. This lets you quickly scan articles from several websites without visiting each one individually. To view a single RSS page, click the RSS icon in the Safari address field when you see it, or click a bookmark for an RSS page.  To view several RSS pages at once, follow the directions below:

 

As you’re viewing RSS pages, notice the options on the right side of the Safari window that let you search and sort the articles. You’ll also find a slider that determines how many lines of the article are presented in the RSS view.  The table below lists a number of RSS feeds from major news organizations:

 

Major News RSS Feeds

New York TImes

Washington Post

CNN

NPR

NYSED

BBC

 

 

 

 

  WebQuests

A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most of all of the informaiton for the project that learners work with comes from the Internet.  WebQuests were one of the earliest ways that teachers integated technology in the classroom.  The developer of the WebQest model, Bernie Dodge of San Diego State University, manages the best web site on WebQuests, where you can search for WebQuests by subject and grade level, and access online systems for authoring WebQuests.  Click the link above to access the SDSU site, which also contains a plethora of useful resources on WebQuests.

 

 

 

  SlideShare

 

SlideShare is a social networking site where users can upload PowerPoint presentations and PDF files of presentations created in other software packages.  Users can also create "slidecasts", which are a combination of slideshows and podcasts.  As with all social networking sites, users can tag slideshows, share them, and invite others to view their work.   SlideShare is like YouTube for PowerPoint creations.  An example of a teacher-created "slidecast" is shown below.  The slidecast is entitled "Literacy remixed in a Web 2.0 World", and it was posted by teacher Judy O'Connell.

 

 

 

 

Slideshare has infinite possibilities in the classroom.

 

 

 

  4Teachers Tools

ALTEC corportation provides a great set of free tools for teacher sin public and non-profit schools.  Funding for the website is provided by the University of Kansas.  Links to some of the most useful tools are listed below, with brief descriptions of each.

 

NoteStar

NoteStar is an Internet utiliy to assist in teh preparation of research papers.  Teachers and students can set up reserarch projects with topics and sub-topics.  Students may then take advantage of NoteStar's many features to collect an dorganize their notes and prepare their bibliography page.

 

RubriStar

RubriStar is a free tool to help teachers create quality rubrics.  Users can browse exemplary rubrics by subject area and can create, edit, and store rubrics online. 

 

ThinkTank

ThinkTank is designed to help students develop a "research organizer" for reports and projects.  Based on the subject assigned, the students can refine it by choosing from a variety of suggestions and by using a random subtopic generator.  This helps students learn how to refire a subject so that it is more manageable for Internet research.

 

TrackStar

TrackStar is a starting point for teachers for online lessons and activities.  Teachers simply collect web sites, enter them into TrackStar, add annotations for students, and create an interactive, online lesson called a Track.  Teachers can create their own "Tracks" or search a database of hundreds of thousands created by other teachers.

 

Assign-A-Day

Assign-A-Day is a free tool designed to enhance teachr and student communication through an online teacher-managed calendar.  Teachers crate a calendar for each of their classes and add assignments for the students to view.  Students view their teachers calendars in order to see assignments for classes they might have missed, or to get an overview of the class. 

 

Kids' VId

Kids' Vid is an instructional website to help teachers and students use video production in class to support project-based learning.

 

 

   Gliffy

Gliffy is a smiple, easy to use web-based applicaiton for creating flowcharts, diagrams, and grapical organizers.  Gliffy Basic is free and lets students engage in mind-mapping or create diagrams for classroom assignments.  Students work from an extensive library of shapes and connectors.  They can publish their creations and collaborate with others in the creation process.  The documents can be imported into almost any application.  Gliffy works with Macs and PCs in a cross-platform environment.  Click on the Gliffy Examples link to view the types of diagrams that can be created.  You can view a movie on Gliffy by clicking on the embedded YouTube video below:

 

 

 

 

   Zoho

Zoho is an online suite of tools that allow users to create just about anything via your Web Browser.  Zoho provides a suite of productivity applications such as an online word process, spreadsheet creator, presentation tool, wiki generator, chat client, planning software - and more.  If the future of software applications is on the Internet - Zoho is a great start.

 

 

 

 

  Google Docs

Google also has a suite of online productivity applications.  Google Docs allows you to create documents, spreadsheets and presenations online quickly and easily.  You can export the creations to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or other applications.  Google requires you to create an online account - but the tools are free.  Google Docs allows you to publish your work as a web page adn control who can view your documents.  This is really great stuff.

 

 

 

   Yaca Paca

A very cool, free website that allows teachers to create quizzes, tests and electronic portfolios.  Teachers can set up work for classes and create assessment modules.  You can watch a demonstration video of Yaca Paca by clicking the link. 

 

 

 

  Scratch

Scratch is a new programming langauge that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art - and share your creations on the web.  Scratch is designed to help young people developed 21st century learning skills.  As students create Scratch projects, they learn iimportant mathematical and computational ideas, and gain a deeper understanding of the process of design. 

 

Scratch was developed by some creative engineers at MIT.  The three PDF publications listed below provide some additional information on Scratch.

Creating-with-Scratch.pdf

Learning-with-Scratch.pdf

Programming-with-Scratch.pdf

 

 

 

   The Complete Web 2.0 Directory

This is a completely unique website that lists hundreds of links to the Web 2.0 world.  It is a great place to browse around and check out the enormous number of Web 2.0  offerings.  If you've ever wondered what the next generation of Internet use is - check out this directory.

 

 

 

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