The Web 2.0 environment has opened the door to many new free Web-based collaborative tools. Below are some of the tools that I use in my classroom or have explored for use in the classroom setting.
Tumblr makes it effortless to share anything you find or create. Post text, photos, quotes, links, dialogues, audio, video, slideshows, and more. You can create private posts or entire private blogs, and then invite friends, family, or co-workers to view or contribute. Tumblr even allows your audience to submit posts for your approval!
Glogster EDU Premium is a collaborative online learning platform for teachers and students to express their creativity, knowledge, ideas and skills in the classroom. A Glog is created using a very easy to understand, drag and drop interface that is relevant, enjoyable, and scalable for students of all ages and learning styles. A Glog is an interactive visual platform in which users create a “poster or web page” containing multimedia elements including: text, audio, video, images, graphics, drawings, and data.
Jing gives your students the information they need, when they need it. Use Jing to record your feedback as you grade papers, or take a snapshot to share with your class. Your students can even use it to collaborate, or ask questions!
Edmodo promotes anytime, anyplace learning. Functionally, it allows teachers to post messages, discuss classroom topics, assign and grade classwork, share content and materials, and network and exchange ideas with their peers - but in reality, it is so much more. Take a peek at some of the unique ways teachers are using Edmodo to make their classroom a community.
VoiceThread allows for group conversations to be collected and shared in one place from anywhere in the world. All with no software to install. A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). Share a VoiceThread with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too.
At first I was unsure about how some of these tools would be used in the elementary classroom, but then I explored some more and saw the wealth of affordances they offer. All of these Web 2.0 tools provide you with an education version or the ability to make material private to protect children. All of the tool environments are very easy to navigate and manipulate. The interfaces are set up in a logical order that is kid friendly and similar to interfaces they use in their free time and provide help for the users along the way to enrich their material they are presenting. Due to this ease of use, I can spend all my time on the objective and not spend an entire class period teaching the tool. What I love best about these Web 2.0 tools are they they give a voice to every student in the classroom, not just those who will raise their hand because they are comfortable in front of the group.
I look forward to finding more ways to integrate these Web 2.o collaborative tools into my instruction. Do you have any ideas on how to best integrate them?
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