CHS   "Technology" Teaching & Learning Group

Web 2.0 Tools

4J TILT: Technology Integrated into Learning and Teaching wiki

http://4jtilt.wikispaces.com/
         - Links to and explanations for many web tools.  A great place to start if you are a bit lost!

Please note:
Most of the following sites require you to create an account.  This usually involves creating a user name, a password and giving your email and that's pretty much all.   If you don't want to use your 4J email, create a Gmail (Google) or Hotmail account and manage all your online tools from that email address. 

iGoogle 

http://www.google.com/ig
Personalized search page.  Requires log-in so not useful for a homepage but good for personal use.

Google Page Creator 

http://pages.google.com/-/about.html
Online webpage creation; no need to use a server to host your webpages! Still in it's early days but really easy to use.   See my example: It took me 10 minutes to log-in and create a simple page: http://jvignoul.googlepages.com/home

Google 

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dcdn7mjg_72nh25vq
Online Document / Spreadsheet / PowerPoint / Folders creation

The Common Craft Show
http://www.youtube.com/commoncraft        
YouTube site about wikis, blogs, social networking etc.
          - Òa series of short explanatory videos by Lee and Sachi LeFever.
         [Their] goal is to fight complexity with simple tools and plain languageÓ
         Scroll down to see all that is offered.

Moodle
4J iPortal:  http://iportal.4j.lane.edu/
Moodle is a free software platform designed to help educators create online courses or manage their courses in an online format.  It is very similar in nature to Blackboard, except it's free, which is why 4J is encouraging its use as opposed to Blackboard.  Locally, Lane ESD purchased the right to use Blackboard for its members (including 4J) but it is based on a grant and there is no guarantee that it will continue to be made available.  The University of Oregon uses Blackboard.

4J is still in the process of setting every teacher set up on Moodle and it is in the piloting stage.  Eventually, you will simple log on with your 4J user name and password, as will your students.  Here's an example of what is might look like.  If you enter your own user name and password, your current students will show up.   

Blogs
Churchill offers the ability to create a blog on our site.  Go to the CHS homepage and login in the left-hand column: http://www2.chs.lane.edu/   You can now create your blog!
Blogger is a tool that you use instead:  https://www.blogger.com/start

A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.  Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject... A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments, in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.  From Wikipedia [Blogs]

Wikis
"Wikispaces" is a good tool for creating wikis:  http://www.wikispaces.com/

"A Wiki can be thought of as a combination of a Web site and a Word document. At its simplest, it can be read just like any other web site, with no access privileges necessary, but its real power lies in the fact that groups can collaboratively work on the content of the site using nothing but a standard web browser.

Beyond this ease of editing, the second powerful element of a wiki is its ability to keep track of the history of a document as it is revised. Since users come to one place to edit, the need to keep track of Word files and compile edits is eliminated. Each time a person makes changes to a wiki page, that revision of the content becomes the current version, and an older version is stored. Versions of the document can be compared side-by-side, and edits can be recalled if necessary."
-From the "Using Wiki's in Education"- website @ http://www.scienceofspectroscopy.info/edit/index.php?title=Using_wiki_in_education

Zoho
http://www.zoho.com/
Another online word processor/spreadsheet/presentation tool (as well as other applications...)  Includes wiki creation tools.   It's a very cool site with many online applications that have more bells and whistles than the Google applications.

"The Zoho Office Suite is a web office suite which includes tools for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, note-taking, wikis, CRM, project management, invoicing and other applications. Being web-native, all Zoho applications are operating system independent."  From Wikipedia [Zoho]

VoiceThread
http://ed.voicethread.com/#home
(Educator site - free!)
A VoiceThread is an online media album that allows a group of people to make comments on images, videos, and documents, really simply.
You can participate 4 different ways –
using your voice (with a microphone or telephone),
typing in text,
audio file,
video (with a webcam).

It's easy to control who can access and comment on a VoiceThread, which makes it a secure place to talk about almost anything: business and academic presentations, travelogues, family history, art critiques, language study, tutorials, book clubs and digital storytelling.

A VoiceThread allows an entire group conversation to be collected from anywhere in the world and then shared in one simple place.

Del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us/
Online tool that allows you to bookmark favorite web sites, tag them with as many names as you want to organize them and keeps them published on the web.  You can access them with your user name and password and also see what other people have book marked.

This would be a great way to keep a list of websites you want your students to use, easily accessible from any computer.