From: Rights of Parents who Home School
I really like your views, expressions and ideas, Trista. That makes sense about the stat exams and what not as well. I had no idea that was why they… ...
From: Technology Integration and Student Communication
I fully agree with you. I have taught in Masters Degree programs in the field of Education in both the traditional and the online environments. I… ...
From: Can NCLB be fixed? Should It be?
wetz, Interesting article... I wonder what they think students are 'reading'? Sounds odd to me...it is difficult to 'read' and miss out on 'history,… ...
In the last 5 years, I have been amazed at how the internet has changed. I am on the internet every day for at least 4-5 hours a day doing my job as an online instructor. However, I have been so busy and involved with learning the tools on our virtual campus that I have missed out on the exciting innovations of the web in general.
In the past it has always seemed to be a battle of the budgets for most schools. Do we spend this year’s technology money on new and additional hardware or in purchasing software licenses? What good were great computers with no software?
As always, innovative educators have found a way to solve this problem. There is no law against sharing software you design yourself (although big software companies probably wish there was). So educators have done exactly that, made tools for teachers and students and shared them on the internet. Now the problem is how do classroom teachers find these tools and learn to use them?
Again fellow educators come to the rescue. Several excellent blogs post annual lists of the best online tools. Others post discussions of their experiences learning to use online tools. Most of these published tools come with free tutorials and even multimedia training on how to use them.
Please share your favorite free online tool with others by posting it here.
I find a lot of Revision3 vidcast quite helpful with new technology/internet applications. I especially like systm, pixel perfect, and tekzilla. I also watch dltv every week. Just last week dltv had some great Firefox applications.
Thanks for the dltv suggestion. It is a real cut above most tech type show. Very informative.
I have found several uses for Second Life or Open Life.
http://www.secondlife.com
http://www.openlife.com
This isn’t a Web 2.0 tool, but you can easily take ‘screen shots’ and integrate products into web and ppt presentations.
Examples:
Build ‘story board images’ for presentations or instructional designs.
Build 3d animations.
Set up virtual meeting spaces for conferences or demonstrations.
Quickly form simple 3d objects with a fast and easy to use client (most 3d object building software is pretty complex and has a very steep learning curve. With Second Life it’s more like playing with legos!).
Aside from the obvious social potential, (the place is full of people excited about and researching eLearning) there is power to create your own virtual world content and share it with others both on and off the grid. It is intuitive and easy to use.
On Web 2.0….
There really are thousands of freebies out there that do all sorts of specialized tasks. Someone could make a good living just keeping up with it all (a few people do just that).
I feel that SCORM, AAIC, LRN compliance is very important important, and for this reason have found Trivantis eLearning tools are worth every penny in terms of power, time saved, and ease of use. If the systems you design are meant to last, and hope to be integrated into full blown learning management systems be wary about attempting to incorporate random web tools!
Do be careful about straying too far from educational standards with your own hodge podge web-apps and formats. Why? You may save some money up front…but you can also find your site hopless to ‘update’ or ‘integrate’ as new technology grows and develops. Keep it SCORM or something similar…it keeps you ‘meta compliant’ and makes your information more portable!
You don’t always get this when branching out on your own with a random suite of ‘Web 2.0’ tools, but none the less:
One of my favorite ‘Web 2.0’ packages is Zimbra:
http://www.zimbra.com/products/product_editions.html
Zimbra isn’t just one applet or tool…it is an entire open source suite of collaboration tools. Like the linux world, it has various options for ‘free’ or ‘paid including service’ packages. It is worth exploring for those who want to learn to set up serious online Collaboration environments.
Finally, here is a great place to learn more about what Web 2.0 ‘is’, and how people are using it in cybraries and other eLearning environments.
http://www.collegeathome.com/blog/2008/05/29/100-free-library-20-webinars-and-tutorials/
DrLiska |Jan. 1, 2008 @ 9:14 PM
Thanks so much for including links to these valuable tools! Believe it or not, I find Wikipedia very valuable as a learning tool for me to get an understanding of new internet applications in terms I can understand. For those that have never used Wikipedia, you should check it out at http://www.wikipedia.org