Free Web 2.0 Tools
Make classrooms engaging, interactive, relevant and fun!
What are web 2.0 tools?
Web 2.0 tools are easy to use websites designed to encourage creativity, team work, and higher order thinking skills in your classroom. Choose two or three sites that will strengthen your curriculum and make students dig deeper and design innovative solutions to problems. Most of these sites are intuitive and do not require spending much time "teaching the technology." Websites and technology come and go. The important thing is to teach students to think critically with whatever tools they have in front of them.
A Few Tools to Help You Get Started
Click on the links to explore the following sites:
Prezi: a non-linear presentation tool that allows students to zoom in and out of photos and build visual stories. This site is popular in both the education and business world.
Smore: easy-to-build online flyers
Animoto: make music videos with photos and short video clips. Apply for an educators account in order to produce free full length videos for you and your students.
Glogster: virtual posters
Wordle: makes word pictures to help students understand themes and important concepts visually.
Tagxedo: another word cloud site that combines words with visual concepts.
PhotoPeach: online photo slideshows. Basic account is free.
BigHugeLabs: make posters, mosaics, puzzles, and magazine covers with your photos.
Fotobabble: make still photos speak with your voice.
Vuvox: Mix photos, video and music to tell visual stories through collages.
Toondoo: create cartoon strips.
Timeglider: Make online timelines with options to add photos and written information. Basic account is free.
Bubbl.us: a mind-mapping and brain-storming tool
Edublogs: a safe blog site where students can journal and teachers can moderate the content, comments, and privacy of their class.
Voki.com: make avatars and record your voice. This site is a fun way to introduce topics and allow characters to do the talking. You can record up to a 60 second msg. for free.
Museumbox: a space to build virtual museums about a historical event or present evidence about an argument. Sites, videos, and photos can be uploaded and presented in cubes.
TodaysMeet.com: a backchannel meeting place or education chat room where even your shyest students can express themselves live, written conversations.
Dropbox: a cloud-based storage site. Access your documents from any wi-fi device.
Evernote: a virtual notebook. Access your notes, web clips, and documents from anywhere.
Socrative: a virtual classroom and response system. This website works with computers, cell phones and tablets and is great for quizzes, polls, games and assessing understand instantly.
Newseum: a collection of newspapers, current events and videos from all over the world. Especially great for journalism, history, government, and English classes.
Jing: screencasting tool to capture your computer screen and make tutorial videos for your students. You can make videos up to 5 minutes long for free.
QR Code Generator: create QR codes for your students to scan with the cell phones and tablets. Great way to share information quickly.
Quizlet: online flash cards and study games to learn vocabulary.