Web20 reccommendations

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Richard on May 18, 2007 at 8:23am

So far, I haven't had kids use web 2.0 stuff. I'm just learning about them now. I have plans to have kids use enter comments on a blog which will be a parent newsletter. Kids can comment on activities described in the newsletter. I also have plans to have them do a book review wiki. I haven't tried these yet, but I hope they will work. One big obstacle is their lack of keyboarding skill. I may have to hit keyboarding hard at the beginning of the year, then begin these projects later on.

Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on May 20, 2007 at 10:53pm

The plus with VoiceThread is that nearly no keyboarding skills are neccessary. Of course on the other hand you do need to have a microphone and sound card.

Permalink Reply by Kevin H. on May 19, 2007 at 3:09pm

I have tried out voicethread but need to back to it. It seemed very cool.
Thanks for reminding me of that tool.
Kevin

Permalink Reply by Connie Weber on May 21, 2007 at 10:53am

WOW! Keep 'em coming. I just tried voicethread--what a remarkably useful site. Thank you so much. I'm showing it in class in 10 minutes--bet my kids will be off and running with it tonight!!!
So cool.

Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on May 22, 2007 at 6:51pm

Website builder, could be suitable for 6th grades. http://www.weebly.com provides an easy drag and drop interface, with inpage wysiwyg editing, allows for changing design at the click of a button, adding flickr albums, google maps, links, blog, uploading photos and files.
2 Big Advantages, a) NO advertising b)site can be downloaded as a zip file and uploaded to your own server. 1 Disadvantage - on my pc it occasionally freezes.
To get an idea here's a link to a site that took me exactly one hour to build and publish from scratch. http://iteachr.weebly.com

Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on May 30, 2007 at 1:48am

Another opensource mindmapping software is cmaps http://cmap.ihmc.us/
Alternative online mindmapping tools are mindmeister http://www.mindmeister.com
mindomo http://www.mindomo.com and gliffy http://www.gliffy.com (in fact gliffy is much more than a mindmapping tool and can be used to create floorplans, webpages and much more)

Permalink Reply by Gary Torstenson on May 31, 2007 at 10:32pm

I've been using 21classes.com with some of my 3rd graders this year. It took some convincing of parents, but I explained that everything that they type in the blog goes to the administrator part of the blog for my approval or rejection before it is sent out to the world. Comments added by anyone also go to the administrator site for approval. The program also allows the blog to be set so only members can read or comment on the blogs. The students are working under aliases. They actually think that is pretty cool.

Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on July 4, 2007 at 8:19am

Some wonderful tools, games and resources for young children can be found at http://www.jambav.com In fact there is so much that you need time to check them all out. I have tried "Noolz" their online flipbook maker - it's an excellent tool for creativity, unfortunately the "creation" you make can't be embeded into other web pages but a link can be sent by mail and it can be found in the directory on the site. I also tried "matrix" (or was dot matrix?), a join the dots game where children can also create their own join the dot puzzles for others to solve.

Permalink Reply by Lisa Parisi on July 5, 2007 at 4:44pm

Wow, these are all great tools. You all just added to my stress this summer. ;) We used http://classblogmeister.com/ and the kids loved it. Every comment, every blog comes through the teacher so nothing goes on the site without permission. The students each have their own site to design as they wish, and they actually connected with kids from other classes in the world. They loved watching our clustrmap (http://www.clustrmaps.com/) grow and it also helped them realize the need for editing (large scale audience).

Permalink Reply by Alice Mercer on July 6, 2007 at 3:13am

I noticed when I was starting talkr for my blog and I went to the site to sign up, they had some very "interesting" topics on offer (one on "self stimulation"), so I would never want my students on the talkr site itself, although that would not eliminate using the plug-in. We are also fortunate in have NetTrekker, which has a conversion to speech utility that you can us on pages you call up through their service.

My favorite service is getting to be Teacher Tube because it's not blocked by my district, and the content is more relevant than You Tube.

Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on July 6, 2007 at 6:39am

OOps I didn't look at the topics at all - but as you say - students would just be subscribing to the RSS of your blog.

As far as video sites go, teacher tube is excellent, there is another education oriented video site SchoolTube.com

I do hope that people will start posting their films on http://dotsub.com as films there can be transcribed and translated by other members - the translations being automatically added to the film as subtitles. This will make videos accessible to the hearing impaired as well as to speakers of different languages. Here's a link to "RSS in Plain English" which has already been translated into 23 languages on dotsub

Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on July 20, 2007 at 9:18am

Secure Social Network for elementary students and teachers.
Yesterday I signed up on imbee, a secure social network for elementary students. Upon registering I was met by features that I have got used to on social sites, profile page, message box, groups, blogs etc... Any adults on the site have a pink frame round their avatar so that children will know they are talking to adults, I am pretty sure that a child cannot interact with people who are not in his social circle I will have to check this once my registration is authorized. Of course there's nothing to stop an adult signing in with his child"s user info, so the system isn't foolproof, on the other hand the system is set up so that parents can easily check what their children are doing and who they have been talking to.
Once my authorization comes through I'll write an update here, or maybe someone else has used imbee.com and can inform us of their experience?