Top 10 List via Teach42

Last Saturday, Steve Dembo shared this Prezi at the NICE Miniconference and was kind enough to also share with his Twitter followers. It's his list of the Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools for Educators.


Many of these are fantastic tools for the classroom, some I have never tried. I love Glogster, but still have to deal with blocks in my district. Teachers at my site got some great work out of students using Glogster before it got blocked last winter. Why was it blocked? It was flagged as a social networking site. This year, I've discovered Wix and my students really like it. Many of them now have their own accounts and regularly create Wix projects for class assignments.

I've also had pretty good luck with Edmodo and Wallwisher as I've described here and here, respectively. Prezi is a fun way to do presentations and is much more interesting than more traditional presentation tools. I've also used Wordle with good success. I've even used Poll Everywhere and really need to do so more often. It's really kind of funny that I was thinking of Poll Everywhere last week while at our district budget community meeting. When community members arrived, they were asked to check out an Activote clicker to participate in the session. I wonder how, if we're so deeply in debt, the district can afford the price tag of an Activote system with nearly 100 clickers. They could have done the same thing for less than $100 with Poll Everywhere. Go figure.

I haven't used Delicious, but instead use Diigo, a similar social bookmarking tool. Unfortunately, both services are blocked in my district. Why? They are flagged a social networking. I recently signed up for Kidblog, but haven't started using it with my students quite yet.

Next on my list to try is Voicethread. We're currently working on a project in class that will fit nicely with Voicethread so those students who are up to the challenge of trying a new tool, will be able to check it out. I hadn't heard about iPadio, but I'm very intrigued by it. What can beat a podcasting solution from a phone?

This is a great list of tools to try in the classroom. If you haven't used any of them try one (Wallwisher is probably the easiest). If you don't like it, go to another. That's how this stuff works. There's something out there for everyone.

Wishing I was there: NECC 2009

One of the truly amazing things about technology and Web 2.0 tools is that even though NECC 2009 was beyond my budget this year, I can still benefit from the many fabulous sessions that are taking place. The ISTEConnects Blog is the first place to stop to find streaming video and a schedule of sessions that will be streamed.

Last night, I read this excellent post summarizing Malcolm Gladwell's keynote. The Ed Week Digital Education blog also has a summary and commentary on the keynote.

This morning, I read Wes Fryer's notes from a session that explains the "Rock Our World" project and how it is creating meaningful connections for students around the world.

Steve Dembo's Prezi on top 10 Web 2.0 Tools has some great resources. You can watch the session here.

A convenient schedule of streaming sessions can be found here and here.

My head is spinning from all this information.