Many web 2.0 applications are cognitive tools that can engage students and promote student achievement. Many communication tools can promote interactions between students and with the instructor. We have put together this page to help you find and use the some of the best web 2.0 applications in your classroom and online instruction. Click on the links below to jump to that category.
Description: Web conferencing software that allow instructors hold a conference with real-time interaction to walk participants through resource materials. Some software allow you to archive the session as it happens.
Pedagogical value: Solutions that allows educators and students to build relationships by combining interactive technologies with instructional best practices.
Wimba is being phased into Blackboard Collaborate.
- CTL's Collaborate page
Description: While traditional presentation tools such as PowerPoint are strictly linear in nature, new software allows educators to create fluid, non-linear presentations.
Pedagogical value: Information can be restructured in ways that show relationships between concepts. Online distribution allows for easy dissemination of the knowledge.
This online software allows you to create presentations which exist on a virtual canvas, instead of individual slides. Grouping ideas together in frames, you can zoom in and out of your presentation media.
PresentationTube offers a PowerPoint presentation recorder and video sharing network to help teachers, students and business professionals produce and share presentations in video format.
Description: A Web site developed corroboratively by a community of users, allowing any user to add and edit content.
Pedagogical value: Allows instructors to organize and interrelate information, while students can collaborate and co-construct knowledge.(example: create a wiki and have every student post where they get their resources. You can easily see all the information in once place. They can also use this after the course ends.)
Wikipedia uses wiki technology to create a free, online encyclopedia.
You can create a wiki within any Blackboard course and allow your students to collaborate on it.
Description: A Web site on which an individual or group of users record opinions, information, etc. on a regular basis.
Pedagogical value: The chronological sequence of blogs makes them useful for metacognitive tasks. Students can collaborate on blogs to form and reflect on their understanding of the course subject matter.
Google's blogging software is free and easy to use to create personal blogs.
A little less user-friendly than Blogger, Wordpress gives you more options and will allow you to add pages to create a simple website. Basic features are free, but customization options are fee-based.
You can have your students create blog entries right within your course in Blackboard
Pedagogical value: Micro blogs allows students to "coordinate activity, document an event or follow a live-feed for an event in progress (be it locally or on the other side of the world."
is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets".
LinkedIn is a social networking website for people in professional occupations.
- How it works youtube video (2 min)
Description: Social bookmarking is a method for online users to save, organize, and exchange websites of interest.
Pedagogical value: Assists in the forming of collaborative networks, promotes the identification and exchange of information.
Curate your own magazine on topics that matter to you.
Delicious is an easy, free tool to save, organize, and remember the links you find interesting on the web.
An image-based bookmarking site, Pinterest allows you to "pin" projects, recipes, products, and anything you love to "boards" you create.
Description: Allows users to access and edit the same file while accessing it from different computers regardless of geographic location.
Pedagogical value: Provides opportunity for collaboration on document creation, and offers a method for instructors to provide feedback on students' work.
Create and share your work online and access your documents from anywhere. Manage documents, spreadsheets, presentations, surveys, and more.
Microsoft Office Online
Microsoft now offers Office online in the cloud.
Description: New software and tools allow users not only to edit photos and create graphics, but provide image repositories, online whiteboards, and diagramming tools.
Pedagogical value: Mulitmedia uses the natural information-processing abilities that we already posses as humans. Our eyes in conjunction with our brain allow us to transform meaningless data into information.
An online photo management and sharing app.
Jing is a screenshot and screencapture software. Jing captures anything you see on your computer screen, as an image or short video, and lets you share it instantly.
Description: Free audio tools allow instructors to create, edit and post to the internet.
Pedagogical value: Supports "dialogic approaches to learning," encourages faster contribution and personalization.
Audacity is a free, open-source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds.
Upload lectures, interviews, course documents, and more to Regent's iTunes U. Students can then download or stream them at their leisure.
Description: Multimedia tools that allow video editing.
Pedagogical value: Helps explain procedural information. Editing and sharing means pedagogies can be transmissive to constructive. Mulitmedia uses the natural information-processing abilities that we already posses as humans. Our eyes and ears in conjunction with our brain allow us to transform meaningless data into information.
|Windows Live Movie Maker||Movie Maker video tutorial||included with Windows 7|
|iMovie 11||iMovie tutorials||included with iLife purchase|
|iMovie app||Start a new movie Apple tutorial||
$4.99 App store
Description: Screen recording software alows you to create a digital recording of computer screen output and often contains audio narration.
Pedagogical value: Provides a more effective means of sharing processes than matching images and text.
Instantly capture images and videos.
Records screen activity from the Windows desktop into standard AVI movie files.
Online screen recorder for one-click recording for free.
Description: This type of software assists users in creating a diagram to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea.
Pedagogical value: Can be used in a range of metacognitive tastes and encourages students to ponder elements of a concept and how that concept might relate to others. This imcreases understanding.
A free, mindmapping web application. Allows for collaboration.
Freemind is a free, powerful mindmapping software. It can export your map as HTML/XHTML, PDF, OpenDocument, SVG, or PNG.
Description: Tools that allow you or others to share screens.
Pedagogical value: Screen sharing or capture programs allow concepts to be demonstrated with mulitimedia tools.
This app combines screen sharing with meeting tools. A limited free version is available.
Share your screen with another user through this website - no special software required.
Description: Digital Storytelling is a short form of digital film-making that allows everyday people to share aspects of their life story.
Pedagogical value: Mulitmedia uses the natural information-processing abilities that we already posses as humans. Our eyes and ears in conjunction with our brain allow us to transform meaningless data into information.
An online software which allows you to put your photos and videos into one video you can download or share online.
Free, web-based software that allows students to collaborate on digital picture books.
This Web-based digital storytelling program enables users to upload pictures or documents, record accompanying audio (or video) commentary, and invite others to record commentary as well.
- Learning Web 2.0 Tools A to Z - A guide on engaging students with Web 2.0 tools.
- The Digital Toolbox: An Introductory Guide to Collaboration Technology - This guide is meant as a "cursory introduction to some of the collaborative products and features available" in order to help you "navigate this dizzying collection of online services."
- GoodReads - post your own reviews and catalog what you have read, are currently reading, and plan to read in the future. Don't stop there - join a discussion group, start a book club, contact an author, and even post your own writing. Free.
- Doodle Online polling software. Easy scheduling, free of charge and without registration (good for online office hours or have students schedule their presentations)
- TEDTalks -TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading."
- Wordle - An application for generating word clouds from text you provide.
- Evernote - An application for note taking, remembering things, saving webpages, syncing calendars, or planning your next trip.