digitalLEARNING-Aug-2010-[37-38]-Web 2.0 Collaboration Tools for Class Rooms

case study

Web 2.0 Collaboration Tools for Class Rooms Simmi Kher

Web 2.0 has revolutionised the education world and brought the world closer. Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them

The Internet has undergone a revolution since the 1990s and early 21st century. Earlier, the World Wide Web was mainly used to surf and find information where the information streamed in only one direction. Websites were typically made by people who had mastered HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) coding and knew FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site management.

However, in 2004 the Internet began to change its appearance and gave birth to new web tools that allowed ordinary people to dynamically work on the web. This enabled people to add and delete the contents to already existing websites and hence websites became more dynamic and information flowed both the ways. People, who did not belong to the programming world were rapidly editing and adding public contents to the web in the form

of their own periodicals, podcasts, videos, wikis, photographs, slideshows, auctions, and more.

The second generation of the web had taken birth, named Web 2.0 making websites more attractive and user friendly. As per Wikipedia, Web 2.0 is “commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web�. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups, and folksonomies. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to passive viewing of information that is

provided to them.� Web 2.0 technology is also known as the Read/Write or the interactive web, as the users are able to read the content and at the same time able to make changes to the content as per their requirements and hence this serves as a great platform for educational purposes.

Today, teachers are using the Web 2.0 tools to introduce lessons in their classroom. Students are collaborating with other students around the world, creating online content and displaying their work to a global world. Web 2.0 facilitates professional collaboration, networking, critical thinking, collaboration, innovation, creativity, global understanding and multicultural learning. Various tools for collaborative writing and editing, private communication, online conferencing, file sharing, and desktop sharing enable teachers to effectively collaborate with

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It has been truly said “Power comes from effectively combining information with technological capacity and the creative capacities of human beings.”

~Lois Gander

the students beyond school hours thus making optimum use of the technology available.

Google Docs Google Docs is a free service provided

by Google to its users. It serves as an excellent application for collaboration where teachers and students can use it to share documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Professionals can too collaborate with their teams and clients in real-time Skype Skype is an application that allows making voice calls over the Internet (the technology is called Voice over Internet Protocol – or VoIP) that is completely free of cost. Apart from VoIP, Skype also offers in-built features for instant messaging (IM), video conferencing, and file sharing.

Mind Mapping Tool A mind map is a visual tool that helps build up around a central idea by creating branches like a tree whereby each branch symbolises a thought process of an individual using different words. A mind map provides a pictorial image of your thoughts and hence helps to assimilate them. This is especially very useful for teachers and students whereby teachers can use mind maps to evaluate students’ logical bent of mind, creativity and their thought process. For students it serves as a tool to graphically

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put their thoughts together. Bubbl. us, for example is a simple free online application that allows brainstorming easily by creating a mind map for any topic.

Wridea Wridea is a brainstorming tool that enables one to collaborate and share ideas with colleagues, students, and fellow learners and organise and categorise ideas onto different pages, providing unlimited storage, and also allowing users to comment on topics and ideas. Features of Wridea are: • Sharing and collaborating ideas with others • Categorising ideas under different pages • Prioritising ideas by assigning different categories • Inviting and creating friends groups • Sharing page(s) with others • Commenting on ideas • Searching ideas • Creating and customising Wridea tools and API Diigo Diigo is a social bookmarking site that can be used by researchers to mark and highlight pages on the World Wide Web. The can even add footnote remarks, make notes or add comments to these pages and access them later from any computer . “Diigo” is an abbreviation for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff”.

Audio Pal This is a free site to create audio files where voice can be recorded by phone or microphone and uploaded as an audio file. It can also create audio from text to speech.

Gliffy Gliffy is an online diagram software for creating professional-quality flowcharts, diagrams, floor plans, technical drawings, and more. The online diagram editor makes it easier than ever to create great looking drawings. The power of graphics organisers has been verified by research in promoting strong thinking skills and comprehension for all ages. It is a free online tool for creating graphic organisers without purchasing any software.

Teachers and students can create the organisers or the class can create them together, such as in a brainstorming session on any topic.

By using the above tools, the teaching learning process can be made interesting enabling both the teachers and students to collaborate, work and share together.

Indeed Web 2.0 has revolutionised the education world and brought the world closer. \\

Simmi Kher

Coordinator India, Tony Blair Faith Foundation