Collaboration+Tools

// Web 2.0 tools enable students to move from presentation-driven learning to collaborative learning. Students now have the ability to create, collaborate, connect, communicate, and share ideas with anyone in our global society. Constructivist learning is the outcome. //
 * 21st Century Tools for Collaborative Learning **


 * Blogs, Audioblogs, Videoblogs, Podcasts **
 * // Relevance for teaching and learning //** : //Blogs promote communication of ideas and the sharing of knowledge while building a community of learners.//

· **__ [|Audioblog.com] __**  A service to help you publish your podcasts, or videos to the web. (Not free but very inexpensive)

· **__ [|Blogger:] __**  Extremely easy to use. There is a nice array of templates and great video tutorials to help you get started. It’s free.

· **__ [|Edublogs] __** : Made with educators, K-12 students, and college students in mind. This site helps educate new bloggers by connecting to BlogSavvy. Also blogs made here link to Chalkface, an assessment tool. There are forums and example sites embedded on Edublog. Great for education.

· **__ [|ePals] __**  Created for - and catering to - K-12. This site offers teachers, students, and districts the ability to create email accounts and blogs. But in addition there are forums that allow teachers all over the globe to connect to each other and take part in lessons of their choice or projects created by the sponsor of this site, National Geographic. Don’t miss this.

· ** [|Odeo]  ** A search engine to help you find and play the most recent audio and video files on the web. You can subscribe to favorites and create playlists to share with friends.

· **__ [|Slidestory] __**  Add pictures and narration and share them on the Internet. Simple and free. · **__ [|Talkr] __**  A free service that allows you to listen to text-only news sources rather than to read them. By pointing **Talkr** to an RSS feed the information will be converted from text to speech. Drop it onto your iPod. Think of the possibilities for special needs students.

  · **__ [|Pbwiki] __**  This site offers versions for business as well as educational use. This site advertises a document manager feature that allows you to share documents, spreadsheets, and Powerpoints. Using Pbwiki is supposed to be as easy as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  · ** [|Wikispaces] ** Free to educators (I’m using it for this site). Wikispaces is easy to use, has great tutorials – and I can attest to this – great technical support! There are several levels of security, nice templates (additional options for a fee), and helpful tutorials.
 * Collaborative File Creation: Wikis **
 * // Relevance for teaching and learning //** : //A wiki is a web page with additional features. Wikis can be edited and the content changed by others. Use this tool to facilitate group collaboration, peer editing, and process writing.//

 · **__ [|Glypho] __**  A collaborative site for fiction writing. A writer begins a story and other writers join in to complete it. Site visitors and participants review and rate the contributions.  · ** [|Google Docs and Spreadsheets] ** Through this site you can import, share, and edit documents and spreadsheets or you can create documents for collaboration. You must use Mozilla Firefox browser with this for the best results. <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-list: Ignore; msofareastfontfamily: Symbol; msobidifontfamily: Symbol; msolist: Ignore;"> · ** [|Zohowriter]  ** Features an online word processor that allows you to create, edit, and share documents. Includes a template library. Includes a variety of file formats including PDF. <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">
 * <span style="font-size: 14pt; color: #000080; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Creative and Collective Writing Tools **
 * // Relevance for teaching and learning //** : //By adding these tools to your classroom students can collaborate on projects simultaneously from any location. Students can become a community of learners as they collectively author projects together.//


 * <span style="font-size: 14pt; color: #000080; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Collaborative Social Change **
 * // Relevance for teaching and learning //** : //Collaborative Social Change is a movement found in education and in today’s world, to empower people to collaborate in pursuit of social justice. The following web sites will help our students form networks and learning communities as they problem solve solutions to today’s issues. Understanding and appreciating viewpoints from other cultures is a critical component of global citizenship and can be approached from every curriculum area.//

<span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; mso-list: Ignore; msofareastfontfamily: Symbol; msobidifontfamily: Symbol; msolist: Ignore;">· ** [|Care2] ** The company motto is: “Individual actions can collectively make a difference.” This network will help you stay informed about important causes, show you how to take steps for self improvement, and take action to improve the world.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; mso-list: Ignore; msofareastfontfamily: Symbol; msobidifontfamily: Symbol; msolist: Ignore;">· ** [|Idealist.org] ** Idealist is a project a nonprofit group, Action Without Borders. At this site people can exchange resources and ideas, and learn about volunteer opportunities to begin building a better world.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; mso-list: Ignore; msofareastfontfamily: Symbol; msobidifontfamily: Symbol; msolist: Ignore;">· ** [|Change]  ** Change.org is an organization dedicated to raising awareness about important causes and empowering people to take action to make positive changes in our world.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Symbol; mso-list: Ignore; msofareastfontfamily: Symbol; msobidifontfamily: Symbol; msolist: Ignore;">· ** [|Do Something.org]  ** With a special focus on teens, this organization aims “to inspire, support and celebrate a generation of doers: people who see the need to do something, believe in their ability to get it done, and then take action.” Their goal is to convert your ideas and energy into positive action. <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|Education World Forum]  **  Published by Education World this site is focused on professional development for teachers. Here you will find postings from teachers all over the country in a variety of areas such as by subject area, grade level, special interest area and more. Teachers helping teachers.
 * Discussion Forums, Online Communities, Online Networks **
 * // Relevance for teaching and learning: //**** Chris Dede from Harvard University xxx describes this best: “ ** Discussion forums allow remote, asynchronous, two-way communication and collaboration among teachers and students. ..Discussions can go beyond the curriculum, allowing richer content and development of higher-order thinking skills, because discussion forums give students time to search for more information (online or in textbooks) to support their opinion, think through their arguments, and craft their responses thoughtfully.”

<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|ePals Student Exchange:] ** Based on the principle of authentic learning, students can connect to students anywhere on the globe to encourage cross cultural collaborations and the exchange of ideas. The student forums address relevant student issues and topics.

<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|Teacher Tube] **  This is a video sharing website popular with teachers for sharing educational resources and professional development ideas. TeacherTube is similar to YouTube, and became popular with teachers, because YouTube is banned from most classrooms. <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|Teacher Video Network] ** A non-profit organization that connects teachers for the purpose of improving student learning and to build teacher leadership. Here teachers can find videos of successful teaching practices in action.

<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|Twitter] ** A social networking service that allows users to send and read each other’s updates. Each post is limited to 140 characters in length and delivered to all subscribers. Twitter has begun being used in schools to notify parents.

<span style="font-size: 11pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|The Alice Project] **  (Alice.org) Alice is a teaching tool, created at Carnegie Mellon University, to teach introductory computer programming. It can be used from middle school through college. With this software (free downloadable from the web) students use and animate 3D graphics to tell a story or create an interactive game. This drag and drop environment is a great introduction to programming.
 * Gaming/Computer Programming, Student created 3D animations **
 * // Relevance for teaching and learning //** :

<span style="font-size: 11pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|Scratch] **  Students use this new programming language to create interactive games, stories, animations, and videos. Users snap together different combinations of building blocks to create sequences that build animations and games, allowing players to control characters using keystrokes. You can also design your own characters making them speak and interact. Students upload their projects to the Scratch website commenting, rating, and building upon each other’s work.
 * Mashups/Collective Media Creation **
 * // Relevance for teaching and learning: //** Mashups are digital media files that contain any or all functionalities such as video, text, graphics, audio, animation, etc, that are recombined or modified to create a new product. Students can work in any location to create a new song using parts of other songs or create a video by editing from more than one source, or author a paper drawing from many sources. Students collaborate to create new and unique materials.

<span style="font-size: 11pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|We Feel Fine] ** This site is an example of an art Mashup as art. Every few minutes the system harvests human feelings from weblogs posted on the Internet. When the system finds the phrase “I feel” and “I am feeling” it records the full sentence and identifies the feeling expresses. This information is saved and using pictures, a montage is created. <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|Health Map] ** This web site brings validated infectious disease reports together into a comprehensive view of the current global state of the disease and their effects on human and animal health. The data is aggregated by disease and displayed by location on a world map.

<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|Flickr]  ** Students as well as photographers can post their pictures online, and then using the organizer feature, cad add photos to a group specified location. Facilitates collaborative group work.
 * Multimedia Design, Photo Drawing/Sharing and Online Video Creation **
 * // Relevance for teaching and learning: //** Mashups

<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|Jumpcut]   ** Here you create videos and publish them to the web. As part of an online creative community you can access any of the media posted by others and use it in your movie and share your video with the community.

<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> · <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">**[|Google SketchUp]**    Students can create 3D models of just about anything here. Create a model city for Google Earth, design a skate-park, or interior building designs then export an animation and share it on Teacher Tube or You Tube. <span style="font-size: 11pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|PhotoStory 3]  ** This freeware is very popular for creating digital stories because of it’s ease of use. Easily create slideshows using digital pictures, motion, music, and narration. Very nice for student presentations.

<span style="font-size: 11pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|Picasa] ** A free software for organizing, editing, and publishing photos and photo projects, such as a photo-collage, to the web.

<span style="font-size: 11pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|Tux Paint]  ** This open source online drawing software is geared for students ages 3-12. Is similar to KidPix and includes special tools such as magic tools, rubber stamps, shape tool, and the ability to publish your work to the web.

<span style="font-size: 11pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|VoiceThread]  ** A collaborative multimedia slide show for images, documents, and videos. Participants navigate pages and leave comments. Comments can be left in 5 ways: using voice, text, audio, or video through a webcam. Participants can also doodle on the shared screen, and publications can be exported to MP3 players or DVD’s.


 * Mapping and Space Technologies **
 * // Relevance for teaching and learning: //**

<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|Google Earth]  ** Students can view any place on earth, using satellite imagery and mapping software. Students can use this software to study geography, demographics, and much more. There are features for measuring, drawing and using GPS functions. <span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|GIS Online]  **  “//A geographic information system integrates hardware, software, and data for capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information//” quoted from GIS.com, the Guide to Geographic Information Systems, [] Viewing GIS data in three ways, database view, map view, and model view, lends to great problem-solving capabilities for students.


 * Social Bookmarking **
 * // Relevance for teaching and learning: //** Through the use of social bookmarking sites, students can collaborate on projects by saving websites with pertinent information and sharing the sites with others.

<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|Backflip] ** Create folders of URL websites and share this information in easy to review categories.

<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|Del.icio.us] ** Make file folders to store bookmarks from any computer. Especially important is the ability to tag bookmarks to and organize the information more easily.

<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: navy; font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol;"> ·  ** [|Furl] ** Similar book marking capabilities with additional features such as a unique tagging system. Students tag websites and share the sites but also they can see what other colleagues have shared by tracking the information by conducting a Tagstream search.

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