WEB 2.0 FOR EDUCATION
How to successfully integrate Web 2.0 tools into your classroom
Hello!
This tutorial is designed to assist any classroom teacher that wants to add Web 2.0 tools into their classroom.
How to use this Tutorial
• This tutorial of Web 2.0 tools includes dozens of links to resources for more in-depth knowledge about a topic. Click on them!
• Also included are videos and podcasts that are meant to clear up any confusion you may have on these tools.
Main Menu
Social Bookmarking
Online Presentation
Tools
Media Creation and
Editing
MicroBlogging The Flipped Classroom Google Apps References
This tutorial covers the following topics:
What is Web 2.0? Blogs WikisRSS
What is Web 2.0?
“The term commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web.”
- Wikipedia (a Web 2.0 tool)
Web 2.0 is not…
• a separate or an improved version of the internet;
• mainly about new technology, although it can certainly make use of it;
• traditional in any sense of the word
Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0
• Static web pages;• Read only;
• Viewed via browsers
• Created by coders• Domain of the geeks
• Dynamic web pages• Read/write
(contribute)• Viewed via anything!
(browsers, RSS feeds, apps, etc)
• created by everyone• Open to anyone
The Web 2.0 World, Visualized
Web 2.0 tools Guidesheet
What is a Blog?
• A blog is a type of website or part of a website. • Blogs are 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.
• Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
What are the Advantages of Blogs?
Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.
Blog posts can be indexed and are easily searchable for when you are looking for something specific.
Why use Blogs in Your Teaching?
• “Weblogs provide an excellent opportunity for educators to advance literacy through storytelling and dialogue” (Huffaker, 2005)
• “For those with access, blogging is a democratic medium in which individuals can post their daily editorials, diaries and observations” (Jon Katz, 1999).
• “(Blogs) promote a learner-centered approach because they afford personal expression” (Wrede, 2003).
• Click here for 100 more reasons to use blogs!
One for All or All for One?
1. Before you begin, you have to decide if you want one blog for your entire classroom, or if you would like each student to have their own.
For a Classroom Blog
• You can create a blog quickly and easily at a number of sites: LiveJournal, Blogger, WordPress, and Xanga are just a few examples.
• There is also a good chance that your school has invested in software that will host your blog. Check with your technology coordinators or leaders!
Choice 2 – Every Student gets a Blog!(just pretend Oprah said that for the effect I was going for)
• If this is the route you prefer, I would recommend Edublogs for younger children or any of the previously mentioned sites for high school students.
• You will have to walk them through the creation process for the blog and be sure to make sure they adjust their settings to fit your security needs.
How will you use your Blog?
• Now that you have created a blog and the security settings are set, you have a couple more choices.
• You can have students participate by having them post to the comments/discussions part of your post.
• Or you can allow them to create Blog posts on their own.
Keeping up with Everyone’s Blog
• Keeping up with everyone’s blog may seem daunting at first, but the use of RSS feeds (We’ll get to this soon), will make your life much easier.
• Assign students to comment on other student’s blogs and encourage their feedback to be constructive.
When using Blogs, be sure to…
• Teach students what is expected of them.– That includes whether you want to allow informal
acronyms, such as, LOL or IMO and emoticons.• Refer to it in the classroom to place relevance
and meaning to their posts.– If you ignore the classroom blog(s), you may
inadvertently signal that it is not a valued part of the classroom
Using Blogs? Watch out for…
• Students without access to the internet and therefore with access to blogs– Giving students access to the blog during class
time can alleviate this problem• Leaving blogs unattended. If you are no
longer using a blog, be sure to close it.– If you set it up where you have to approve each
comment or post before it goes on your page, this will be a non-issue.
Links to Ideas for Blog Use
• Not sure where to start? Click a link below for ideas!–100 different ideas separated by grade level
and subject (in high school)– Ideas for students and teachers–A blog with ideas on how to use blogs!
Microblogging
• Microblogging is blogging, but in much shorter bursts. It often includes text or images and can link easily to webpages.
• You can Microblog via Instant Messaging (IM) software, texts (SMS) from a cell phone or almost any mobile device.
• Twitter is easily the most ubiquitous microblogging platform so we will focus on them for this section.
• Getting started with Twitter is easy. There are literally hundreds of sites to teach you the basics such as this one or this other one or even this site which helps teaching you the nomenclature.
• Twitter is extremely versatile and well worth your time if you learn how to use it.
Why use Twitter in your classroom?
• Communicate with experts! Great sources of information are on Twitter such as NASA and other Government agencies, writers, scientists, and many more!
• Easily communicate and share important updates with your class in a flash.
• Twitter limits messages to 140 characters and teaches children how to be more concise thinkers. (Wright, 2010)
When using Twitter, be sure to…
• Teach students about the basics of Twitter and convey your expectations.
• Plan enough time to carefully think how using Twitter will help your teaching.
• Be flexible and prepared for the direction the tweets of the class will take you.
Ideas for how to use Twitter
• This article from 2008 highlights advantages and disadvantages of using Twitter in your classroom.
• 50 ideas using Twitter in Education
• 31 Interesting ways to use Twitter in the Classroom
Wikis. What are they?
• A wiki is an editable webpage used where a group of people need to create, edit and review each others documents. The most famous is probably Wikipedia a giant free online encyclopedia with articles contributed from people all over the world.
Why use Wikis in Your Teaching?
• “Wikis were of value for collaborative learning, particularly when this involved developing shared documents.” (Kear, Woodthorpe, Robertson, & Hutchison, 2010)
• “Thus, it is clear that this ownership promotes responsibility, authorial identity and the values of giving credit for intellectual work, which is a very positive development.” (Su & Beaumont, 2010)
• Click here for other advantages of using Wikis!
Wikis: Where to Create them?
There are a lot of different places on the web to create wikis. For your classroom, you will want to select one where you can control who edits it (permissions).
Also, be sure that you can access the wiki site from your school. You don’t want to set this up only to realize that your school blocks access to the site.
Wikis: Where to Create them?
• MediaWiki, popular wiki engine. (Used for Wikimedia projects and wikiHow.) The official website also provides a vast collection of information on the software.
• Wikihost.org, wiki hosting community that provides free wikis of 100 MB per wiki.
• Intodit, Free hosted Wiki groups service.• PBwiki, a high-quality and easy to use wiki hosting service
that has free and premium versions.• Wiki Spaces, I would say this is the easiest to use for the
technically uninclined.• Editme, makes wikis easy-to-use and productive.
Using Wikis? Be sure to…
• Teach students what is expected of them.– That includes whether you want to allow informal
acronyms, such as, LOL or IMO and emoticons.• Refer to it in the classroom to place relevance
and meaning to their posts.– If you ignore the classroom blog(s), you may
inadvertently signal that it is not a valued part of the classroom
Links to Ideas for Wiki Use
• Not sure where to start? Click a link below for ideas!– 50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and
Interactive Classroom– Wikis in Education – A wiki dedicated to teachers t
o post how they are using wikis– A collection of articles about Wikis
Using Wikis? Watch out for…
• Students without access to the internet and therefore with access to wikis– Giving students access to the wiki during class
time can alleviate this problem• Leaving wikis unattended. If you are no longer
using a wiki, be sure to suspend alterations.– If you set it up where you have to approve each
comment or post before it goes on your page, this will be a non-issue.
Web 2.0 Presentation Tools
• There are many times when PowerPoint just falls short of your needs, this is where these free Web 2.0 tools can come into play.
• These tools can act as supplements to PowerPoint, or they can replace PowerPoint as your presentation software choice.
The Problem with PowerPoint
• Just about everyone is familiar with Microsoft PowerPoint, but PowerPoint can be difficult to share.
• There are different versions that aren’t always compatible with each other.
• PowerPoints can be very large files and impossible to email.
• PowerPoints can also be difficult to create with others.
Web 2.0 to the Rescue!
• Web 2.0 applications can help these limitations.
• There are many applications to choose from, each with there own unique features.
So Many Choices!!
AuthorStreamBrinkPadEmpressrGoogle DocsJing
KinetiCastMyplickPreZentit.comPreziSlideRocket
There are others, but most just copy many of the features of these applications without adding more anything.
SlideshareVCASMOZoho Show280SlidesPresentationEngine.com
Advantages of these Applications
• Presentations are available for viewing in most browsers and/or able to be downloaded.
• Most of these applications allow PowerPoints to be uploaded and easily shared.
• Some offer statistics about how many people have viewed your presentation along with how long they spent on each individual slide.
• Some applications offer to make videos out of the presentation, complete with audio.
Spotlight: SlideShare
• Some things that you can do on SlideShare• Upload presentations publicly or privately• Download presentations on any topic and reuse or remix• Embed on blogs, websites, anywhere• Share on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn• Slidecast: sync mp3 audio with slides to create a webinar• Embed YouTube videos inside SlideShare presentations• Use SlideShare PRO for premium features like branded
channels, analytics, ad free pages etc
Web 2.0 Presentation Tools
• With all of the different options out there, the toughest part can be figuring out which one of these presentation applications best fits your needs.
• One last tip, you can almost always embed these presentations on other websites, including blogs and wikis (hint, hint).
Social Bookmarking
• There are trillions of websites that comprise the World Wide Web. How can you find relevant sites of good quality?
• Search engines can yield millions of results, but not always the most relevant to what you want.
• Bookmarking sites help you manage, find, and save the content that is most interesting to you and then, more importantly, share it with friends, relatives, and everyone else on the Internet.
Advantages of Social Bookmarking
1) Have all your bookmarks in one place: While every browser has the ability to save favorites and bookmarks, these bookmarks can only be accessed on that computer in that browser window. Saving your favorite sites on the web allows you to access them anywhere, anytime.
2) Organize your favorite websites: Social Bookmarking allows quick and easy access to anything you bookmark. For example, some sites allow you to add tags to your favorites, providing a quick and easy way to find and organize like sites.
3) Share your bookmarks with others and see what other people are bookmarking. This is social for a reason. With these you create a profile that you can share with your friends so that they can see what you're a fan of.
Social Bookmarking Links
• Teaching Social Bookmarking with DIIGO Education
• How to use Social Bookmarking• This article from Education World also has
many relevant links to other articles about Social Bookmarking.
RSS
• RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication.• Most web pages have a .xml file that can be
subscribed to and fed to a newsreader/ aggregator
• The newsreader/aggregator with display the new content from the site when it becomes available.
• Basically, articles come to you rather than you going to the websites.
Create a RSS feed for your Class
• As long as you have a website or a blog of your own, you can create your own newsfeed. In reality you can also find websites that will enable you to create a feed.
• Using Feedburner, you can turn any blog or feed address into a working feed. This is extremely easy!
• FeedYes makes it VERY easy to create your own feed or to make a feed from any website.
RSS with Social Bookmarking
• Create bookmarks of internet sites and then syndicate these findings.
• Great for groups researching a topic together or an instructor that wants to share great websites they have found.
• Others can subscribe to your bookmarks and receive them whenever the publisher adds a new bookmark.
• Citeulike.org allows you to search academic papers and then subscribe to feeds on academic topics.
RSS of your Student’s Blogs
• Students can keep their own blogs with their own rss feed.
• Others can subscribe to the blog and keep up to date with content.
• Comment on each others blogs• Teachers can easily find individual student content by
subscribing to individual feeds or by combining all the student feeds into one class feed.
RSS of your Classroom’s Website
• Parents/students will receive new content as it is made available.
• You can have a feed of:– The classroom calendars of events – Classroom Assignments– Reminders– Grade updates– Student Responses
Auditory Learners Rejoice!
• It is possible to transform a textual feed into audio using talkr.com or feed2podcast.com
• A great way to reach learners with a variety of styles.
• Post notes into a blog and then they can receive the audio.
Media Creation and Editing
• The ability to edit audio, images, or video can be an incredibly useful tool in the classroom.
• There are software programs that can create and edit media that will cost you a lot of money.
• The next group of slides will show you some incredible free tools to get the most out of your media!
Audio Creation and Editing
There are dozens of reasons to have a good audio editor at your disposal:
• Editing inappropriate words or lyrics from songs or speeches.
• Cutting down an audio file to a specific section.
• Make recordings much clearer by removing background noises.
Audacity
• Audacity is the #1 tool for audio editing today.• Audacity is a free, easy-to-use
and multilingual audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:
• Record live audio.• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.• And more! See the complete list of features.
Ideas for Audacity in Education
• Mark Wagner, the host of ‘Audacity in Education Wiki,’ lists his favorite activities here.
• The ‘Tip of the Iceberg’ blog shares their best ideas here.
• Audacity can also be used to record lectures or speeches for students to listen to later at their leisure.
Image Creation and Editing
• Images have been proven to help reinforce learning and retention.
• There are many resources on the web to help find appropriate images, edit those images, and then have them ready when needed.
• There are also many applications that can help you upload your images or create original ones.
Image Creation and Editing
Photoshop can cost $1000 or more, but there are dozens of free tools to choose from today.
From just taking out ‘red eye’ from photos to cropping and resizing images, to substantial photographic effects, there is a program out there for everyone.
Just the Basics: Picasa
• If your tech un-savvy co-teacher emailed you tomorrow and said she or he needed an easy-to-use program for organizing and editing photos, you'd likely send them to download Picasa.
• The built in editor is more than robust enough for most casual users and includes basic color correction, cropping, and a variety of special effects—the majority of which manage to avoid being cheesy.
• Picasa is extremely easy to use for the kind of quick crop and correct editing most educators may need.
Some Advanced Features: Aviary
• From basic image retouching to complex effects, Phoenix delivers the key features of a desktop image editor with the simplicity and accessibility of a web-based application.
• Can work with layers• Complementary suite of Creation Tools
Closest to Photoshop: Gimp
• GIMP has long been toted as the open-source competitor to Adobe Photoshop.
• Color correction, channel mixing, advanced cloning, paths, and layered compositions are all part of the GIMP package.
• There is very little the average Photoshop user does that can't be done in GIMP.
Video Creation and Editing
• Video editing and creation is quickly becoming an integral part of high school education.
• Cell phones, cameras, and camcorders can all capture video today. However, there is almost always a need to edit it.
• If your school has not invested in video editing software, there are some free alternatives for you!
Windows Live Movie Maker
• Windows Live Movie Maker is a free download on the Windows OS.
• This video creation tool emphasizes simplicity over almost all else.
• Innovative features such as Auto Movie help you generate a polished movie from your videos or photos.
• Choose music and a variety of transitions and effects to customize your creation and make it really stand out.
Apple iMovie
• Apple iMovie is comparable to Windows Live Movie Maker, but Apple iMovie is used on the Mac OS.
• Apple iMovie is almost as easy to use as Windows Live Movie Maker, but it also has many advanced features and add-ons.
• Movies can even be edited on the go using the iPhone 4 or the iPad.
• Lightworks is a free, cross-platform, video editing software program.
• There are literally dozens of features.• This software has been used to edit many
movies, including Oscar nominated movie, The King’s Speech
• Click here for a basic tutorial of Lightworks.
Awesome! Now what?
• Now it’s time to figure what is going to work the best with your teaching style and resources.
?? ?
Flip Your Teaching!
• This is one of the newest ways to use technology to teach in a whole new way.
• Basically, your class lecture becomes the homework and your homework becomes the classwork!
Flipped Learning
• In the Transforming Education Through Technology Journal (or THE Journal for short), an article titled, ‘The Vod Couple,’ first explains this concept.
Flipped Learning
Flipped Learning
• "They need us to be physically present to help them when they're struggling”
- Jonathan Bergmann
This strategy allows the lecture or notes to be done on their time, and the practice of the new material done at a time where the teacher can individually help students and emphasize important parts.
Flipped Learning
• There are many resources to help you if you are interested in this:
• The Flipped Class Network contains many links to videos and articles on this topic.
• The Electric Educator blog has a terrific article including video examples of this idea being used and helpful hints to get started.
• The 21K12 blog also has a terrific tips to get you started with this.
Apps for Education
• Google has wonderful free tools for almost everything mentioned in this tutorial.
• Google Docs includes– Documents– Presentations– Spreadsheets– Forms– Drawings– Collections
Apps for Education
• Google also has many Webinars and other tutorials to help you get started with their educational tools.
• You can also join the Google Apps Community for tips and tricks.
Apps for Education
• Still unsure about Google Apps for Education? Take a look at their customer review page that contains dozens of case studies and video reviews of schools using their apps.
• According to the research:– “Google Apps has significantly improved the way
students and teachers work…”(Nevin, 2009)
Survey Monkey
• Congratulations! You’ve made it all the way through this tutorial and as your reward, I would like to request you do some more work.
• Please click here or the title above and give your feedback on this tutorial by answering some questions on Survey Monkey.
• Thanks and I hoped it helped!
References
• Huffaker, D. (2005). The Educated Blogger: Using Weblogs to Promote Literacy in the Classroom. AACE Journal. 13 (2), pp. 91-98. Norfolk, VA: AACE.
• JonKatz (1999) Here come the web-logs. Slashdot.com. Available online at: http://slashdot.org/features/99/05/13/1832251.shtml
• Kear, K., Woodthorpe, J., Robertson, S., & Hutchison, M. (2010). From Forums to Wikis: Perspectives on Tools for Collaboration. Internet and Higher Education, 13(4), 218-225. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
• Nevin, R. (2009). Supporting 21st Century Learning through Google Apps. Teacher Librarian, 37(2), 35-38. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
References
• Su, F., & Beaumont, C. (2010). Evaluating the Use of a Wiki for Collaborative Learning. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 47(4), 417-431. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
• Wrede, O. (2003) Web-logs and discourse: web-logs as a transformational technology for higher education and academic research, paper presented at the Blogtalk Conference, Vienna, 23–24 May.
• Wright, N. (2010). Twittering in Teacher Education: Reflecting on Practicum Experiences. Open Learning, 25(3), 259-265. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
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