Some Web 2.0 Tools for Education

Here are a few tools that could be useful and make my (and maybe your) classroom a little bit better:

Glogster is a website where students can create free digital posters (which the site calls Glogs). They have developed a unique digital canvas and supply a wealth of content in an effort to simplify the creation process for students. I just completed a poster creation project with one of my classes, and this site could have really helped streamline this process for me and my students.

Google Apps for Education is a free service (including free from ads) for faculty, staff, and students that was started by Google in 2006. It provides a way for students and teachers to collaborate and share projects and files. They also supply over 30 gigabytes of storage space for each user. One of the easiest ways to use Google in the classroom is for teachers to set up shared documents with students so they can help them edit papers and projects in real time.

Although Alice Storytelling is no longer supported online, the Alice software has been an incredibly useful tool in my computer science class. Students are able to learn the fundamental concepts of programming without having to worry about syntax while interacting with a 3D world. It gives students a tangible way to interact with common concepts in programming. It was developed at Carnegie Mellon University and was initially released in 1998.

Symbaloo is a bookmarking program that creates a personal startpage for users. This visual organizer of bookmarks can be accessed from any computer. With the help of cloud storage and a browser tool, Symbaloo tries to make it easy to save bookmarks and access them from any computer. These links can be easily shared with students using their service as well.

Everytime I've seen someone give a presentation using Prezi, I've been impressed. Instead of just flipping from slide to slide, Prezi lets the user connect  different aspects of their presentation visually. They zoom in to the details and zoom back out to the next item on the map. There are also collaborative tools that can be used for creating group projects and presentations.