Web 2.0 : Internet-based, user-centered tools that facilitate communication, information sharing, and collaboration.
Feel free to suggest others!
Broken links checker http://www.iwebtool.com/broken_link_checker
Carrot2 organizes your search results into topics. With an instant overview of what’s available, in folders, circle or foam tree, you will quickly find what you’re looking for.
Facebook to connect with your friends and networks of interest, yes I know you know this, yet it needs to be added to this list as it is a major driver of social change.
Google Groups : Find a group or create yours
LinkedIn Over 100 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities
Ning Create Your Own Social Website, build a social destination to create a community, foster conversations, drive action and earn revenue.
Press Display Newspapers from around the world
StumbleUpon takes you to web pages, photos, and videos handpicked by your friends and like-minded people. Attention! Quite time-wasting!!!
Te Ara Encyclopedia : ‘Te ara’ in Māori means ‘the pathway’. Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand offers many pathways to understanding New Zealand. When complete, it will be a comprehensive guide to the country’s peoples, natural environment, history, culture, economy, institutions and society.
Te Puna directory: A directory to New Zealand & Pacific Island web sites
Twitter : Social networking and microblogging service utilising instant messaging, SMS or a web interface, to Follow your interests: Instant updates from your friends, industry experts, favorite celebrities, and what’s happening around the world.
Wikimedia a database of 9,766,928 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute
Wolfram Alpha is new way to get knowledge and answers— not by searching the web, but by doing dynamic computations based on a vast collection of built-in data, algorithms, and methods. Very interesting. Try it!
Google Trends shows the interest over time of a particular key word. For example Climate Change interest rose to high in 2010 following a BBC News program. It can also compare several key words.
Campaign tools
The internet and social media are really game changers. From top down information where only selected media can get their word out to a space -yes virtual but still a space- where everybody can change history… Let’s use it for a better world.
Avaaz is a global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere. Only 5 years old, it has 41 millions members and achieved amazing change.
Change.org is the world’s largest petition platform, empowering people everywhere to create the change they want to see.
GiveAlittle is a zero fees online fundraising platform for all New Zealanders, by the Spark Foundation.
Kickstarter to fund creative projects.
Bookmarking services
You know how to add pages in your favourites but what happens if you are not on your computer? Bookmarking services gather links from all and any subjects and have tools to help retrieve them easily: tags and bundles. They are available from any computer and you do not necessarily have to log in to access them, which I find great.
Free Bookmarking services include Delicious and Diigo.
I have been using Delicious for a few years. Delicious propose tags and automatically import the links you shared on Facebook. I offers to create “bundles” of links.
Content Curation
Content curation organises a variety of content (links but also notes, images, docs from your computer…) under one specific theme. They are great to use in education, as a lesson one-stop-shop resource. The most popular is Pinterest, very visual with its clickable icons which contain clickable subchapter icons containing “pins”.
ScoopIt is very similar but less distracting with less “people” stuff.
I have been using Livebinder at school for example for a class unit for energy and recycling as all the bookmarks/resources appear on the same page and give an immediate overview of the content. You can click on a tab to open a website while all the tabs stay on top.
I have also used Stich.It which presents a slideshow of websites. Extremely easy to use, no login required, just paste the list of url and click Stich It to get a link you can use.
Dictionaries
http://www.dictionary.com/
www.thesaurus.com
http://www.wordcentral.com/ – a wonderful dictionary site for kids
www.visualthesaurus.com create a mind map of the synonyms. Also a spelling bee game and cool other features.
Fun and useful Web 2.0 tools
BibMe Easy and Fast Bibliography Maker
Bubbl.us is a free online brainstorm and colourful mind map tool, super easy to use.
CreateAGraph Graphs and charts are great because they communicate information visually. Here you will find five different graphs and charts for you to consider. Younger students
Doodle helps you find a date for a meeting 2x faster!
Flickr 5 Frames Stories To tell a story in 5 Frames (Visual story telling) on Flickr
www.gnod.net Gnod is a self-adapting artificial intelligence system, living on this server and ‘talking’ to everyone who comes along. Gnods intention is to learn ‘understanding’ its visitors. Even if you don’t know what you are looking for – gnod will find it!
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Graphic Organizers, Mind Maps and Concept Maps are pictorial or graphical ways to organize information and thoughts for understanding, remembering, or writing about. Graphic organizers, mind maps and concept maps are powerful tools that can be used to enhance learning and create a foundation for learning. More advanced students.
Jing Screen-capture software, including videos and sequences. So easier to use than Print Screen.
Loomio is an easy to use online tool for group decision-making.
Prezi to create awesome and powerful presentations. Discover one of my prezi on information literacy here.
Emaze, even better!
Tagxedo is the best word cloud generator with amazing shapes, yet it requires the installation of a software. Still worth it.
Wordle is a good online cloud generator to create effective engaging posters.
More free web 2.0 resources on Joyce Valenza’s Open Source Resources
Blogs blogs…
Why blog?
- Free, easy, dynamic, public and secure
- Creates a conversation, listening/answering to users
- Enhances writing (and thinking) because it is read by anybody: You write your best piece!
- Computers engages the youth. We use this tool to lead them to learning.
We have compared several blog servers, NZ ones, edublog, wordpress, blogspot… Blogspot is easier to use but wordpress allows you to create several Pages, which makes it look nearly like a website.
How to?
Find and follow your Favourite blogs
To find blogs you like, you can google it or use Technorati, a blog searching tool.
You do not have to be registered to follow blogs. You can add them to your Favourites to find them again.
Or you can receive their Feeds. Click on the RSS link generally provided to add to your Feeds list. To see your Feeds, choose the Feeds Explorer bar. You can also choose to receive the updates by email, if you select this option.
Or you may get a dashboard, from blogspot to follow your blogs.
Some blogs will be “private” and you need an invitation from its administrator to be able to access.
To create a blog
Go to wordpress.com then Register your blog. Then follow the steps to choose your theme, your widgets, and write your first posts. Details and help with cool tutorials on http://support.wordpress.com/getting-started/
Hints: add one picture per post, add tags (keywords) for your posts.
When you have your own blog, you can add the blogs you like to your blogroll (=links) for easy retrieval.
Examples
In education:
- “My” library’s blog http://maclic.wordpress.com
- In collaboration with Mt Aspiring College English Department, blogs were set up to support each different courses:
- In club situation: Using a blog to reports club’s news and meeting minutes, sponsors links, resources and much more… Ex: http://staruc.wordpress.com or http://macteamgreen.wordpress.com.
- In business situation: Using a blog as a dynamic marketing tool, allowing to listen to customers. Ex: http://drillabseil.wordpress.com/
If you need help
If you want a blog but do not feel confident to set it up, ask me!
Regenerative Livestyle Blog 