WEB+2.0+COLLABORATION+TOOLS+FOR+CLASS+ROOMS

= **Web 2.0 Collaboration Tools For Class Rooms** = Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 Web 2.0 has revolutionized the education world and brought the world closer. Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them Today, teachers are using the Web 2.0 tools to introduce lessons in their classroom. Students are collaborating with other students around the world, creating online content and displaying their work to a global world. Web 2.0 facilitates professional collaboration, networking, critical thinking, collaboration, innovation, creativity, global understanding and multicultural learning. Various tools for collaborative writing and editing, private communication, online conferencing, file sharing, and desktop sharing enable teachers to effectively collaborate with the students beyond school hours thus making optimum use of the technology available. **Google Docs** : Google Docs is a free service provided by Google to its users. It serves as an excellent application for collaboration where teachers and students can use it to share documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Professionals can too collaborate with their teams and clients in real-time **Skype** : Skype is an application that allows making voice calls over the Internet (the technology is called Voice over Internet Protocol – or VoIP) that is completely free of cost. Apart from VoIP, Skype also offers in-built features for instant messaging (IM), video conferencing, and file sharing. **Mind Mapping Tool**: A mind map is a visual tool that helps build up around a central idea by creating branches like a tree whereby each branch symbolizes a thought process of an individual using different words. A mind map provides a pictorial image of your thoughts and hence helps to assimilate them. This is especially very useful for teachers and students whereby teachers can use mind maps to evaluate students’ logical bent of mind, creativity and their thought process. For students it serves as a tool to graphically put their thoughts together. Bubbl.us, for example is a simple free online application that allows brainstorming easily by creating a mind map for any topic. **Wridea** : Wridea is a brainstorming tool that enables one to collaborate and share ideas with colleagues, students, and fellow learners and organize and categorize ideas onto different pages, providing unlimited storage, and also allowing users to comment on topics and ideas. Features of Wridea are: **Diigo** : Diigo is a social bookmarking site that can be used by researchers to mark and highlight pages on the World Wide Web. The can even add footnote remarks, make notes or add comments to these pages and access them later from any computer. “Diigo” is an abbreviation for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff”. **Audio Pal** : This is a free site to create audio files where voice can be recorded by phone or microphone and uploaded as an audio file. It can also create audio from text to speech. **Gliffy** : Gliffy is an online diagram software for creating professional-quality flowcharts, diagrams, floor plans, technical drawings, and more. The online diagram editor makes it easier than ever to create great looking drawings. The power of graphics organizers has been verified by research in promoting strong thinking skills and comprehension for all ages. It is a free online tool for creating graphic organizers without purchasing any software. Teachers and students can create the organizers or the class can create them together, such as in a brainstorming session on any topic. **Blogs:** The core tool that often gets overlooked because it’s not as glitzy and tends to be viewed as a little older. **Social Networks:** Social networks do blogs one better by making the conversation between users instantaneous. That on-the-spot feedback makes social networking more suited for educators to connect and share resources with contacts outside their classroom or institution. **Synchronous live platforms:** Tools like WebEx and Adobe Connect, can be referred to as live meetings, web meetings, or webinars. Whatever you choose to call them, they provide a virtual venue for online collaborative experiences that play out in real time–similar to a virtual classroom or meeting room. **SlideRocket :** SlideRocket has all of the capabilities of presentation software such as PowerPoint or Keynote, but exists on the web, which gives it a great advantage in the education setting. Teachers can create multimedia presentations that supplement their lessons, share the presentation with their students via a hyperlink, and then track which students viewed the presentation as well as how long they spent looking at each slide. **SchoolFusion :** A website development and hosting solution, SchoolFusion is designed for K-12 schools to use templates to build “fusion pages,” or websites, for individual classrooms, student clubs, academic and administrative departments, or other community, alumni, and faculty functions that may call for one. Web 2.0 tools are woven into SchoolFusion’s web pages, giving teachers instant access to collaborative instruments such as wikis, blogs, messaging, podcasts, and streaming video. **Smilebox :** The Smilebox Teacher’s Toolbox program is a teacher’s digital companion for creative classroom communication. Teacher’s Toolbox gives teachers at all grade levels an easy and creative way to safely share photos, videos, and classroom updates to students and parents. By using the above tools, the teaching learning process can be made interesting enabling both the teachers and students to collaborate, work and share together. Indeed Web 2.0 has revolutionized the education world and brought the world closer.