March 2008 — News

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A Taste of Web 2.0

by Patricia Deubel, Ph.D.

Classroom 2.0, a social networking site for educators interested in Web 2.0 and collaboration. It might be one of the first sites you add to your aggregator. The collection of RSS feeds is vast, as you will find in the RSS Compendium, which provides links to major collections of feeds in several categories.

Productivity and Collaboration Tools
Many productivity and collaboration tools, comparable to those that come with a hefty price, now reside on the Web, including storage. Many are free and might be open source, making them quite attractive to schools. Wikipedia provides a list for open source software packages. Nedwolf maintains Best Free Web Applications, which can serve as a general resource for Windows.  You'll find free Web development tools, software for creating portable media, and software for online Web applications. The latter includes bookmarking managers, file storage/transfer, productivity, collaboration, and internet/network tools like Web-based e-mail, online fax, online chat, and more.

Google is so big that most people probably don't know all of its products and services. The good news is that you will only need to bookmark one page, Simply Google, to learn about those offerings, including its many desirable Web 2.0 productivity and collaboration tools. Educators would be interested in Google Calendar, Docs, and Spreadsheets; Picasa for photo editing and sharing; and Gmail with its mobile access and lots of free Webmail storage. There's Talk for instant messages.

Parents, students, and others who don't speak English as a native language can benefit from everything on your class Web site or other relevant sites of interest, if they know they can translate the content into another language. The Web offers several free translation services. Google Translator works, but you might also compare its output to that from AltaVista's

Babel Fish Translator.

Teacher tools abound. Chalksite, a total Web package for extending the classroom, includes the templates for creating Web pages, as well as online access to grades, assignments, class messages, and discussions in a secure environment. Initial set-up is free for teachers who wish to subscribe five students; expanded accounts have a small monthly fee. Engrade is a totally free online gradebook suite, which includes the gradebook, an online calendar for homework and events, attendance book, student reports, and online messaging for parents and students. Teachers will be interested in