Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking - a method of marking, categorizing, and retrieving important URLs. del.icio.us offers a number of improvements over these browser-based cataloguing tools- first and foremost that your selections are posted online and are thus accessible from anywhere, not just from your personal computer.

 Diigo is a fantastic tool that allows users to save bookmarks in the "cloud."  More than that, you can save images and files over the web, highlight and take notes on a website, and even put digital sticky notes on a website so you can come back later and review your research.

Aimed at college and university students and professors.

Use it to create dedicated lists of educational websites and share them with students – or to allow students to show you the sites they’ve been using.

Great for creating different lists of resources to share quickly and simply with students working on different topics.

Brainify

LiveBinders offers a great way of organizing a student's (or teacher's) web-based work.  Also, LiveBinders can be a handy way to organize a variety of websites you collect as resources or for research.  Best of all, it's free!

Collect URLs, images, video, pdfs, documents, powerpoints and more …. All in place.

MINDMAPPING TOOLS

This online mind-mapping tool allows groups to collaborate on planning and brainstorming ideas around a particular topic. Teachers and students can use it to keep in touch and collaborate on new projects inside and outside the classroom. - See more at: http://www.fractuslearning.com/2012/10/03/tools-student-teacher-communication/#sthash.D44KmDEU.dpuf

Bubbl.us

Webspiration Classroom™ is the web-based diagramming, mapping and outlining service designed to help students brainstorm, plan, organize and write.

For districts using Chromebooks or cloud-based apps, Webspiration Classroom delivers visual learning tools, lessons and templates to support instruction in multiple subjects.

Supports Group collaboration

INSPIRATION

OTHER Collaboration tools

TodaysMeet:  There are LOTS of free tools to use for backchannel chatting (basically, conducting an online conversation while another face-to-face conversation or meeting is going on), but TodaysMeet is a favorite because it's simple to use, free, and the conversation itself can be quickly downloaded and saved.  Further, you can determine how quickly the chat itself disappears from the web.  Since no registration is required and YOU determine the name of the room, there's an element of security built in too!

The backchannel is everything going on in the room that isn't coming from the presenter.

The backchannel is where people ask each other questions, pass notes, get distracted, and give you the most immediate feedback you'll ever get.

Instead of ignoring the backchannel, TodaysMeet helps you leverage its power.

Tapping into the backchannel lets you tailor and direct your presentation to the audience in front of you, and unifying the backchannel means the audience can share insights, questions and answers like never before.

What is a Backchannel

A fantastically simple way to share files, Dropbox means you can instantly send assignments and essays from anywhere in the world to a single common place where they can be accessed by students and teachers alike. -