Wordle

Wordle is an application that allows the user to create word clouds from selected text. You can either nominate a website address, a del.icio.us account, you can just cut and paste the text or you can type it into the box. This is a great way for students to visually represent how the words in a piece of text also have a heirarchy.

http://www.wordle.net/create

Animoto

This is a little Web 2.0 tool that automatically makes 30 second, high resolution videos of your photos or images. This can be embedded into wikis, blogs or websites. There are multiple styles and scaffolds to chose from that will make it look like you have the skills to put together multimedia MTV style clips. These can be displayed within a frame or as full screen presentations.

http://animoto.com/education

Digital Diary - VAPD

One of the things that we need to do in Visual Arts is to keep a diary of our processes. This should articulate our ideas and images, record our media experiments, study the ways other artists have responded and track our solutions that we develop to our own artistic problems. The Visual Arts Process Diary is a place for the art student to reflect on their artistic processes. This is not something that normally comes naturally to boys. Reflection is not something that they do well and we have struggled in the past to get them to record anything but the absolute basics.

We have started to use our laptops as a way of documenting this process. So, near the end of each lesson the students get an opportunity to photograph, blog, podcast or video exactly what they had been working on that lesson. They might discuss or illustrate techniques, solutions to a problem or just document where they are it in the production of their idea.

The idea was that anybody could pick up their video and see how their work went from idea to product. We have never had responses like this. These are the most comprehensive and reflective diaries that we have ever had. The boys can see why we should record this type of information and are even starting to make links between the artists we study and their own work without it being explicitly spelled out for them.

Here are some small snippets from Digital Process Diaries or activities recorded on their laptops;

 

Glogster

Lots of people have heard of Glogster. It is a web 2.0 tool that allows you to construct interactive posters. It is great for students too and only requires a simple email login. The beauty of this tool is that it is truly multimedia. You can include images, text, music and video all on the one doucment. It is a digital collage that can have embedded hotspots that are activated by the viewer. This is literally a drag and drop tool that kids can be using within 5 minutes of introducing them to it. I just love the fact that students have to source the media, evaluate it's effectiveness and re-present it within a graphic context. A great way to achieve a deeper level of understanding than just using a traditional cut and paste collage.

http://edu.glogster.com/

Voicethread - collaboration

Voicethread is the perfect Web 2.0 tool to collect and share comments from your classes about a single or set of source materials. The source material can be text, images or videos. You can ask a question of them or ask them to reflect on a specific aspect of the image. The students can then type a comment, annotate the source material or even draw arrows and lines to emphasise their comments. The beauty of this tool is that all the comments show on the one page. This would be the quickest way ever to mark homework. I love this idea! If you register as an educator you can access some of the features normally reserved for the paid version.

http://voicethread.com

Open publication - Free publishing - More web2

Timetoast - Digital Timeline

Timetoast is one of the Web 2.0 digital timeline creators. It is easy to use and can be constructed quickly by students with absolute minimal instruction. I like the hotspots that are activated by the mouse when you scroll over them. This is perfect for adding another layer of information to your timeline. This is a great tool to use with any age when you want them to see an event of a series of events within a context.

http://www.timetoast.com

Issuu - Online Publishing

Issuu is a Web 2 tools that allows you to publish PDFs. You can produce the documents in any program that you like - I prefer PAGES on the Mac. Once you have created a stunning document to impress the world, simply log on to Issuu and upload your PDF. The whole process takes about 2 minutes and you now have a digital magazine style document. This can be embedded into a blog or onto your website. The example of digital textbooks on this blog have all been embedded as stand alone documents. Give some thought to the tags that you attach to your new magazine so that plenty of people can find it in the online library. If you do not want everyone to see it tick this in the box when you are setting it up and only give the address to the people who you want to see your foray into the publishing world. This would be great for storybooks, illustrated stories or making picture books.

http://issuu.com/home

PREZI - The Zooming Presentation

This has to be my all time faviourite Web 2.0 tool. It is called the zooming presenter and for good reason. This is a non-linear presentation tool that is like powerpoint on steroids. It is perfect for making connections between disparate items and looking at the big picture. This is because you can actually zoom into and out off the canvas space. This allows the audience to make the overarching connections or conversely to focus of one particular piece of information.

It is intuitive to use and students can be creating presentations within minutes. The tool is continuing to add features and different styles to its already impressive library. You can access your presentation anywhere you have access to the internet or you can download your presentation onto your own computer. This is so simple it is beautiful!

http://prezi.com/