Web 2.0 tools and Education

This tutorial is
designed to assist
any classroom
teacher that
wants to add Web
2.0 tools into their
classroom.

• This tutorial of Web 2.0
tools includes dozens of
links to resources for more
in-depth knowledge about
a topic. Click on them!
• Also included are videos
and podcasts that are
meant to clear up any
confusion you may have on
these tools.

This tutorial covers the following topics:

What is Web
RSS Blogs Wikis
2.0?

Media Online
Social
Creation and Presentation
Bookmarking
Editing Tools

The Flipped
MicroBlogging Google Apps References
Classroom

“The term commonly associated with web
applications that facilitate interactive
information sharing, interoperability, user
centered design, and collaboration on the
World Wide Web.”

- Wikipedia (a Web 2.0 tool)

• a separate or an improved
version of the internet;
• mainly about new
technology, although it
can certainly make use of
it;
• traditional in any sense of
the word

• Static web pages; • Dynamic web pages
• Read only; • Read/write
(contribute)
• Viewed via browsers • Viewed via anything!
(browsers, RSS feeds,
apps, etc)
• Created by coders • created by everyone
• Domain of the geeks • Open to anyone

• A blog is a type of website or part of a website.
• Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with
regular entries of commentary, descriptions of
events, or other material such as graphics or
video.
• Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-
chronological order.
• Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to
maintain or add content to a blog.

Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to
leave comments and even message each other
via widgets on the blogs and it is this
interactivity that distinguishes them from
other static websites.
Blog posts can be indexed and are easily
searchable for when you are looking for
something specific.

• “Weblogs provide an excellent opportunity for
educators to advance literacy through storytelling
and dialogue” (Huffaker, 2005)
• “For those with access, blogging is a democratic
medium in which individuals can post their daily
editorials, diaries and observations” (Jon Katz,
1999).
• “(Blogs) promote a learner-centered approach
because they afford personal expression”
(Wrede, 2003).
• Click here for 100 more reasons to use blogs!

1. Before you begin, you have to decide if you
want one blog for your entire classroom, or if
you would like each student to have their
own.

• You can create a blog quickly and easily at a
number of sites: LiveJournal, Blogger,
WordPress, and Xanga are just a few
examples.
• There is also a good chance that your school
has invested in software that will host your
blog. Check with your technology
coordinators or leaders!

• If this is the route you prefer, I would
recommend Edublogs for younger children or
any of the previously mentioned sites for high
school students.
• You will have to walk them through the
creation process for the blog and be sure to
make sure they adjust their settings to fit your
security needs.

• Now that you have created a blog and the
security settings are set, you have a couple
more choices.
• You can have students participate by having
them post to the comments/discussions part
of your post.
• Or you can allow them to create Blog posts on
their own.

• Keeping up with everyone’s blog may seem
daunting at first, but the use of RSS feeds
(We’ll get to this soon), will make your life
much easier.
• Assign students to comment on other
student’s blogs and encourage their feedback
to be constructive.

• Teach students what is expected of them.
– That includes whether you want to allow informal
acronyms, such as, LOL or IMO and emoticons.
• Refer to it in the classroom to place relevance
and meaning to their posts.
– If you ignore the classroom blog(s), you may
inadvertently signal that it is not a valued part of
the classroom

• Students without access to the internet and
therefore with access to blogs
– Giving students access to the blog during class
time can alleviate this problem
• Leaving blogs unattended. If you are no
longer using a blog, be sure to close it.
– If you set it up where you have to approve each
comment or post before it goes on your page, this
will be a non-issue.

• Not sure where to start? Click a link below for
ideas!
– 100 different ideas separated by grade level
and subject (in high school)
– Ideas for students and teachers
– A blog with ideas on how to use blogs!

• Microblogging is blogging, but in much
shorter bursts. It often includes text or
images and can link easily to webpages.
• You can Microblog via Instant Messaging
(IM) software, texts (SMS) from a cell
phone or almost any mobile device.
• Twitter is easily the most ubiquitous
microblogging platform so we will focus
on them for this section.

• Getting started with Twitter is easy. There are
literally hundreds of sites to teach you the
basics such as this one or this other one or
even this site which helps teaching you the
nomenclature.
• Twitter is extremely versatile and well worth
your time if you learn how to use it.

• Communicate with experts! Great sources of
information are on Twitter such as NASA and
other Government agencies, writers,
scientists, and many more!
• Easily communicate and share important
updates with your class in a flash.
• Twitter limits messages to 140 characters and
teaches children how to be more concise
thinkers. (Wright, 2010)

• Teach students about the basics of Twitter and
convey your expectations.
• Plan enough time to carefully think how using
Twitter will help your teaching.
• Be flexible and prepared for the direction the
tweets of the class will take you.

• This article from 2008 highlights advantages
and disadvantages of using Twitter in your
classroom.
• 50 ideas using Twitter in Education

• 31 Interesting ways to use Twitter in the
Classroom

• A wiki is an editable webpage used where a
group of people need to create, edit and
review each others documents. The most
famous is probably Wikipedia a giant free
online encyclopedia with articles contributed
from people all over the world.

• “Wikis were of value for collaborative learning,
particularly when this involved developing shared
documents.” (Kear, Woodthorpe, Robertson, &
Hutchison, 2010)
• “Thus, it is clear that this ownership promotes
responsibility, authorial identity and the values of
giving credit for intellectual work, which is a very
positive development.” (Su & Beaumont, 2010)
• Click here for other advantages of using Wikis!

There are a lot of different places on the web to
create wikis. For your classroom, you will
want to select one where you can control
who edits it (permissions).
Also, be sure that you can access the wiki site
from your school. You don’t want to set this
up only to realize that your school blocks
access to the site.

• MediaWiki, popular wiki engine. (Used for Wikimedia
projects and wikiHow.) The official website also
provides a vast collection of information on the
software.
• Wikihost.org, wiki hosting community that provides
free wikis of 100 MB per wiki.
• Intodit, Free hosted Wiki groups service.
• PBwiki, a high-quality and easy to use wiki hosting
service that has free and premium versions.
• Wiki Spaces, I would say this is the easiest to use for
the technically uninclined.
• Editme, makes wikis easy-to-use and productive.

• Not sure where to start? Click a link below for
ideas!
– 50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and
Interactive Classroom
– Wikis in Education – A wiki dedicated to teachers
to post how they are using wikis
– A collection of articles about Wikis

• Students without access to the internet and
therefore with access to wikis
– Giving students access to the wiki during class
time can alleviate this problem
• Leaving wikis unattended. If you are no longer
using a wiki, be sure to suspend alterations.
– If you set it up where you have to approve each
comment or post before it goes on your page, this
will be a non-issue.

• There are many times when PowerPoint just
falls short of your needs, this is where these
free Web 2.0 tools can come into play.
• These tools can act as supplements to
PowerPoint, or they can replace PowerPoint as
your presentation software choice.

• Just about everyone is familiar with Microsoft
PowerPoint, but PowerPoint can be difficult to
share.
• There are different versions that aren’t always
compatible with each other.
• PowerPoints can be very large files and
impossible to email.
• PowerPoints can also be difficult to create
with others.

• Web 2.0 applications can help these
limitations.
• There are many applications to choose from,
each with there own unique features.

AuthorStream KinetiCast Slideshare
BrinkPad Myplick VCASMO
Empressr PreZentit.com Zoho Show
Google Docs Prezi 280Slides
Jing SlideRocket PresentationEngine.com

There are others, but most just copy many of the
features of these applications without adding more
anything.

• Presentations are available for viewing in most
browsers and/or able to be downloaded.
• Most of these applications allow PowerPoints
to be uploaded and easily shared.
• Some offer statistics about how many people
have viewed your presentation along with
how long they spent on each individual slide.
• Some applications offer to make videos out of
the presentation, complete with audio.

• Some things that you can do on SlideShare
• Upload presentations publicly or privately
• Download presentations on any topic and reuse or
remix
• Embed on blogs, websites, anywhere
• Share on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
• Slidecast: sync mp3 audio with slides to create a
webinar
• Embed YouTube videos inside SlideShare presentations
• Use SlideShare PRO for premium features like branded
channels, analytics, ad free pages etc

• With all of the different options out there, the
toughest part can be figuring out which one of
these presentation applications best fits your
needs.
• One last tip, you can almost always embed
these presentations on other websites,
including blogs and wikis (hint, hint).

• There are trillions of websites that comprise the
World Wide Web. How can you find relevant
sites of good quality?
• Search engines can yield millions of results, but
not always the most relevant to what you want.
• Bookmarking sites help you manage, find, and
save the content that is most interesting to
you and then, more importantly, share it with
friends, relatives, and everyone else on the
Internet.

1) Have all your bookmarks in one place: While every browser
has the ability to save favorites and bookmarks, these
bookmarks can only be accessed on that computer in that
browser window. Saving your favorite sites on the web
allows you to access them anywhere, anytime.
2) Organize your favorite websites: Social Bookmarking allows
quick and easy access to anything you bookmark. For
example, some sites allow you to add tags to your favorites,
providing a quick and easy way to find and organize like
sites.
3) Share your bookmarks with others and see what other
people are bookmarking. This is social for a reason. With
these you create a profile that you can share with your
friends so that they can see what you're a fan of.

• Teaching Social Bookmarking with DIIGO
Education
• How to use Social Bookmarking
• This article from Education World also has
many relevant links to other articles about
Social Bookmarking.

• RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication.
• Most web pages have a .xml file that can be
subscribed to and fed to a newsreader/
aggregator
• The newsreader/aggregator with display the
new content from the site when it becomes
available.
• Basically, articles come to you rather than you
going to the websites.

• As long as you have a website or a blog of your
own, you can create your own newsfeed. In
reality you can also find websites that will
enable you to create a feed.
• Using Feedburner, you can turn any blog or
feed address into a working feed. This is
extremely easy!
• FeedYes makes it VERY easy to create your
own feed or to make a feed from any website.

• Create bookmarks of internet sites and then
syndicate these findings.
• Great for groups researching a topic together or
an instructor that wants to share great websites
they have found.
• Others can subscribe to your bookmarks and
receive them whenever the publisher adds a new
bookmark.
• Citeulike.org allows you to search academic
papers and then subscribe to feeds on academic
topics.

• Students can keep their own blogs with their own rss
feed.
• Others can subscribe to the blog and keep up to date
with content.
• Comment on each others blogs
• Teachers can easily find individual student content by
subscribing to individual feeds or by combining all the
student feeds into one class feed.

• Parents/students will receive new content as it is made
available.
• You can have a feed of:
– The classroom calendars of events
– Classroom Assignments
– Reminders
– Grade updates
– Student Responses

• It is possible to transform a textual feed into
audio using talkr.com or feed2podcast.com
• A great way to reach learners with a variety of
styles.
• Post notes into a blog and then they can
receive the audio.

• The ability to edit audio, images, or video can
be an incredibly useful tool in the classroom.
• There are software programs that can create
and edit media that will cost you a lot of
money.
• The next group of slides will show you some
incredible free tools to get the most out of
your media!

There are dozens of reasons to have a good
audio editor at your disposal:
• Editing inappropriate words or lyrics from
songs or speeches.
• Cutting down an audio file to a specific
section.
• Make recordings much clearer by removing
background noises.

• Audacity is the #1 tool for audio editing today.
• Audacity is a free, easy-to-use
and multilingual audio editor and recorder for
Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other
operating systems. You can use Audacity to:
• Record live audio.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
• And more! See the complete list of features.

• Mark Wagner, the host of ‘Audacity in
Education Wiki,’ lists his favorite activities
here.
• The ‘Tip of the Iceberg’ blog shares their best
ideas here.
• Audacity can also be used to record lectures
or speeches for students to listen to later at
their leisure.

• Images have been proven to help reinforce
learning and retention.
• There are many resources on the web to help
find appropriate images, edit those images,
and then have them ready when needed.
• There are also many applications that can help
you upload your images or create original
ones.

Photoshop can cost $1000 or more, but there
are dozens of free tools to choose from today.
From just taking out ‘red eye’ from photos to
cropping and resizing images, to substantial
photographic effects, there is a program out
there for everyone.

• If your tech un-savvy co-teacher emailed you
tomorrow and said she or he needed an easy-to-use
program for organizing and editing photos, you'd likely
send them to download Picasa.
• The built in editor is more than robust enough for
most casual users and includes basic color correction,
cropping, and a variety of special effects—the majority
of which manage to avoid being cheesy.
• Picasa is extremely easy to use for the kind of quick
crop and correct editing most educators may need.

• From basic image retouching to complex
effects, Phoenix delivers the key features of a
desktop image editor with the simplicity and
accessibility of a web-based application.
• Can work with layers
• Complementary suite of Creation Tools

• GIMP has long been toted as the open-source
competitor to Adobe Photoshop.
• Color correction, channel mixing, advanced
cloning, paths, and layered compositions are
all part of the GIMP package.
• There is very little the average Photoshop user
does that can't be done in GIMP.

• Video editing and creation is quickly becoming
an integral part of high school education.
• Cell phones, cameras, and camcorders can all
capture video today. However, there is almost
always a need to edit it.
• If your school has not invested in video editing
software, there are some free alternatives for
you!

• Windows Live Movie Maker is a free download on
the Windows OS.
• This video creation tool emphasizes simplicity
over almost all else.
• Innovative features such as Auto Movie help you
generate a polished movie from your videos or
photos.
• Choose music and a variety of transitions and
effects to customize your creation and make it
really stand out.

• Apple iMovie is comparable to Windows Live
Movie Maker, but Apple iMovie is used on the
Mac OS.
• Apple iMovie is almost as easy to use as
Windows Live Movie Maker, but it also has
many advanced features and add-ons.
• Movies can even be edited on the go using the
iPhone 4 or the iPad.

• Lightworks is a free, cross-platform, video
editing software program.
• There are literally dozens of features.
• This software has been used to edit many
movies, including Oscar nominated movie,
The King’s Speech
• Click here for a basic tutorial of Lightworks.

• Now it’s time to figure what is going to work
the best with your teaching style and
resources.

• This is one of the newest ways to use
technology to teach in a whole new way.

• Basically, your class lecture becomes the
homework and your homework becomes the
classwork!

• In the Transforming Education Through
Technology Journal (or THE Journal for short),
an article titled, ‘The Vod Couple,’ first
explains this concept.

• "They need us to be physically present to help
them when they're struggling”
- Jonathan Bergmann

This strategy allows the lecture or notes to be
done on their time, and the practice of the
new material done at a time where the
teacher can individually help students and
emphasize important parts.

• There are many resources to help you if you
are interested in this:
• The Flipped Class Network contains many links
to videos and articles on this topic.
• The Electric Educator blog has a terrific article
including video examples of this idea being
used and helpful hints to get started.
• The 21K12 blog also has a terrific tips to get
you started with this.

• Google has wonderful free tools for almost
everything mentioned in this tutorial.
• Google Docs includes
– Documents
– Presentations
– Spreadsheets
– Forms
– Drawings
– Collections

• Google also has many
Webinars and other
tutorials to help you get
started with their
educational tools.
• You can also join the
Google Apps Community
for tips and tricks.

• Still unsure about Google Apps for Education?
Take a look at their customer review page that
contains dozens of case studies and video
reviews of schools using their apps.
• According to the research:
– “Google Apps has significantly improved the way
students and teachers work…”(Nevin, 2009)

• Congratulations! You’ve made it all the way
through this tutorial and as your reward, I
would like to request you do some more work.
• Please click here or the title above and give
your feedback on this tutorial by answering
some questions on Survey Monkey.

• Thanks and I hoped it helped!

• Huffaker, D. (2005). The Educated Blogger: Using Weblogs
to Promote Literacy in the Classroom. AACE Journal. 13 (2),
pp. 91-98. Norfolk, VA: AACE.
• JonKatz (1999) Here come the web-logs. Slashdot.com.
Available online at:
http://slashdot.org/features/99/05/13/1832251.shtml
• Kear, K., Woodthorpe, J., Robertson, S., & Hutchison, M.
(2010). From Forums to Wikis: Perspectives on Tools for
Collaboration. Internet and Higher Education, 13(4), 218-
225. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
• Nevin, R. (2009). Supporting 21st Century Learning through
Google Apps. Teacher Librarian, 37(2), 35-38. Retrieved
from EBSCOhost.

• Su, F., & Beaumont, C. (2010). Evaluating the Use of a
Wiki for Collaborative Learning. Innovations in
Education and Teaching International, 47(4), 417-431.
Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
• Wrede, O. (2003) Web-logs and discourse: web-logs as
a transformational technology for higher education and
academic research, paper presented at the Blogtalk
Conference, Vienna, 23–24 May.
• Wright, N. (2010). Twittering in Teacher Education:
Reflecting on Practicum Experiences. Open Learning,
25(3), 259-265. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

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