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Similar to Powerpoint, but not! This program is a collaboration tool and an assessment tool.

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Helping Teachers Be Awesome See all your students working and give high-quality feedback–from anywhere. Sign Up (Free!)

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I love this site!

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George Lucas Educational Foundation

The benefits of movement in the classroom aren't limited to younger students. Pairing new words and concepts with gestures or dance moves locks in understanding-and active brain breaks prime students to learn even more.

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A free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education.

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Twitter might be the next big thing in Education!

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Twitter might be the next big thing in Education!

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Teachers must be models of lifelong learning, but besides occasionally reading books and blogs, attending conferences, and collaborating with a handful of colleagues at school, how can we extend both the reach and frequency of our interactions with our fellow educators?

Twitter education chats (edchats) are the answer for an increasing number of teachers and administrators, who eagerly participate in these online sessions because doing so meets their professional growth needs as well as their desire to contribute to the education conversation. Building a strong and satisfying personal learning network (PLN) through edchats gives you your own professional support system and a reliable resource for the cutting edge in education-all in real time.

Once you become part of this global community of educators, you'll find a sense of professional camaraderie that will help you through the tough times. Don't underestimate what a small group of like-minded, enthusiastic educators can do for you and for each other, and thus for a great number of children.

Many of the most connected, compassionate, and creative educators regularly network on Twitter and congregate in chat sessions, where they generously share their passion, wisdom, and experience in nurturing and educating children.

Finding the Edchats to Grow your PLN

Twitter education chats occur daily throughout the school year, as well as during the summer, generally in the evenings. Most have an overriding theme or focus on a specific subject or grade level. All edchats feature a set of questions that the chat participants respond to and discuss. Chats usually last one hour, but you may jump in and/or leave at your convenience.

Visit participate.com/chats to easily find the current day's edchats that interest you and work with your schedule. There are a wide variety of weekly chats, with many occurring during a regular time slot. Some states even have their own edchats, but anyone is welcome to take part in any chat.

(For a more detailed explanation of these chats and suggestions for how they can be improved, see my blog post " Improving Twitter Education Chats.")

Lurking, Learning, and Leading

There is nothing to lose and much to gain by joining edchats. You are free to enter a chat without anyone else knowing you're there, so you can listen and learn at your own pace. This is affectionately known as lurking, and even experienced chatters watch from the sidelines on those occasions when they are unfamiliar with a topic or cannot devote their full attention to a chat.

Don't be shy about introducing yourself at the beginning of a chat, though. Announcing that this is your first time in a particular chat or that you prefer to lurk is perfectly acceptable. Just don't be surprised when you are greeted with open arms and encouraged to join in.

Another way to begin slowly is to simply like or retweet others' chat responses to show support and to validate the ideas that resonate with you. The next step is to start commenting on others' responses. Think of this as a relaxed, respectful conversation between colleagues.

Feel free to also follow those chat participants who you admire. They may not follow you back immediately, but once you establish your presence in this community, others will eventually include you as a member of their PLN. Keep in mind that it's not the quantity of followers one has but the quality that matters.

Making Meaningful Contributions

Once ready, you can fully join the discussion. Whenever you have something to say, add your own answers to the current chat question and see which ones get reactions. You don't have to be an expert to participate. As a co-learner, your personal experiences, ideas, and opinions are just as valid as anyone else's. There is also room for a range of responses, including levity, venting, questioning, and courteous debate-all synthesized into 140-character bursts.

If you strive to be an educational leader and to insightfully distinguish yourself, one suggestion is to avoid the obvious or trite in your responses. You need not answer every chat question, so try waiting until you have something impassioned or pithy to add. Focus on moving the conversation forward or deeper rather than merely repeating what most have already said.

If you do so, you'll be viewed as a particularly valued part of the discussion. In time, you likely will also garner more friends than mere followers and may receive weekly personal invitations to participate in certain chats, a sure sign you have found your PLN-and that they have found you.

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An Introduction to Twitter Education Chats

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Teachers must be models of lifelong learning, but besides occasionally reading books and blogs, attending conferences, and collaborating with a handful of colleagues at school, how can we extend both the reach and frequency of our interactions with our fellow educators?

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I have used Storybird, but the kids would love to use their own art work! This story writing program lets them do that, and lets them record their voice to read it!

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StoryJumper: #1 rated site for creating story books

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Easiest way to create, narrate, and publish your own hardcover and paperback books. Read and listen to books from our worldwide community.

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This looks like a great way to organize websites we want to share with students.

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Symbaloo is the #1 choice for teachers, schools and districts who are seeking the best way to organize their online content. You can use Symbaloo to store and share websites, videos, documents, and anything else with a web link.

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Symbaloo is the #1 choice for teachers, schools and districts who are seeking the best way to organize their online content. You can use Symbaloo to store and share websites, videos, documents, and anything else with a web link.

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Lots of lists, but he gives links to resources.

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As regular readers know, it's time for me to begin posting my mid-year "The Best...." lists. There are over 1,900 regularly updated lists now. You can see them all here.

As usual, in order to make this list, a site had to be:

* accessible to English Language Learners and non-tech savvy users.

* free-of-charge.

* appropriate for classroom use.

* completely browser-based with no download required (however, I've begun to make exceptions for special mobile apps).

It's possible that a few of these sites began earlier than this year, but, if so, I'm including them in this list because they were "new to me" in 2018.
The 50 Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2017 The Fifty Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2016 The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2015 The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2014 The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2013 The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2012 The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2011 The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education - 2010 The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education - 2009 The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education - 2008 The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education - 2007
I don't rank my mid-year lists, but do place them in order of preference in my end-of-year lists. Just because a tool is on this mid-year list does not mean it will make the cut for the year-end version.

Feel free to let me know if you think I'm leaving any tools out.

I have also created two new related "Best" lists this year:
The Best Tools That "Automatically" Create Presentations The Best Tools For Creating Chatbots
Here are my choices for The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2018- So Far ( not ranked in any order):

Apagraph lets you create visually appealing online quotations. I'm adding it to The Best Tools For Creating Visually Attractive Quotations For Online Sharing.

Edji looks like a very cool tool for annotating online text. Students can use various tools, including leaving audio comments. I'm adding it to The Best Applications For Annotating Websites.

Digimix lets you create personalized music playlists, along with writing individual comments about each song.

Google unveiled a neat new feature - teachers and students can now create their own virtual reality tours! It's call Tour Creator, and looks very cool. I've compiled lots of resources about it here.

Branch is a new smartphone app that lets users create collaborative stories.

Vinstant looks pretty interesting. Basically, you mix and match different video clips in order to tell a story. The app isn't public yet, and, though they say they'll have a web-based version, that's not available, either. But I think this could be very useful for English Language Learners.

National Geographic has just unveiled Open Explorer. They call it a "digital field journal" where anyone can document their exploration of anything (they use "your backyard" as one simple example), as well as follow the explorations of others (many are much more involved than a backyard). You need to register for the site, which takes a few seconds. The buttons to "start your own expedition" don't seem to work right now, but you can easily get to it by clicking on the "Dashboard" button at the top right of the screen after you register. I'm sure they'll fix that glitch soon. You can read more about it at Why We Created This First-of-Its-Kind Digital Field Journal.

Toonator lets you easily create simple animations. I'm adding it to The Best Ways For Students To Create Online Animations.

The American Chopper Meme has been all around the Internet (see 'American Chopper' Angry Meme Resurfaces and Takes Internet by Storm). You can easily make your own at American Chopper Argument Meme Generator.

Read Ahead looks intriguing. It lets you paste text, or import text from a url address. Then you can divided up the text into "chunks" that appear on slides, along with identifying key words. The text then appears as a slidedeck. Here's one I quickly did. It's also free. The site suggests that it assists comprehension, which makes sense to me. Practically speaking - for me, at least - I could see using it as an easy way to create a slidedeck for a text I want to display to a class on a computer projector. Also, I think it could also be a useful tool for students to either display their own work for classmates to read, or to choose online text and demonstrate strategic thinking by how they would display it for easier comprehension (they'd also show further critical thinking by the key words they chose to highlight).

Scratchwork is an online collaborative whiteboard that seems to be designed with using it for math in mind. I'm adding it to The Best Online Tools For Real-Time Collaboration.

Diveo is an app designed to have multiple people upload video from the same event to one place, where it can all be edited. It's obviously ideal for field trips. I'm adding it to The Best Web Applications That Lets Multiple People Upload Their Photos To One Place, which I just revised and updated.

Anchor is an extremely easy and free way to create podcasts. Even though it's super-easy, it can never hurt to get instructions, and Richard Byrne has created a step-by-step video explaining how to use it. They also announced a super-neat new feature: the ability to automatically take snippets of your podcast and turn them into videos highlighting text.

StoryWeaver looks like an amazing site that is designed to create and translate children's books into a ton of different languages and make them accessible online for free. Users can translate books that are already there into different languages or easily create there own books. It's a great site for students to write for an authentic audience. ELL teachers and their students could get a lot out of the site, and it seems to me that other language teachers could have their students use it, too.

Rocketium lets you create those types of videos you see everywhere with images that have text laid on top of them. Rocketium refers to them as "Buzzfeed-style" videos. I'm adding it to The Best Tools That "Automatically" Create Presentations, even though I wouldn't call it "automatic." It sure is easy, though. I am just not sure where else to put it right now.

Short videos from journalistic sites (including Ed Week and Edutopia) have included images overlaid with text, accompanied by music. They're very engaging, and I've wondered how they create them. Now, I don't have to wonder any longer, because there's a free web tool called Lumen5.With the assistance of Artificial Intelligence, you just paste in the url address of a blog post or article, highlight the text you want to see in the video, identify the images you want to go along with the text, along with choosing music, and your video is done! If any blogger wants to expand his/her audience with video, I can't imagine a better tool available to help make it happen.

Kapwing is a video editor. I'm adding it to Not The "Best," But A List... Of Online Video Editors.

Jot Form lets you easily create online...forms.

Beautiful [AI] uses artificial intelligence to automatically create presentations.

Google announced that you can now have Google Photos automatically create music videos with your pictures.

Sharalike is an Animoto-like app.

Apester is a free tool that lets you create pretty dynamic looking interactive presentations.

Data Wrapper is a new site that lets you create interactive charts and graphs. I'm adding it to The Best Resources For Creating Infographics.

Loom lets you easily make screencasts, though it can only be used in Chrome.

Flourish looks like a good new site for creating infographics.. I'm adding it to The Best Resources For Creating Infographics.

This looks interesting: InsertLearning is a Chrome extension that lets you turn websites into interactive lessons.

I Fake Text Message is a simple tool to create...fake text messages. I'm adding it to The Best Tools For Creating Fake "Stuff" For Learning.

eStory is a new free online timeline-making tool. It's a quick-and-easy registration process, has a very intuitive interface, and the timelines themselves are attractive. And, it's free. What's not to like? I'm adding it to The Best Tools For Making Online Timelines.

Quick, Draw! is a tool from Google that tells you an object and then gives you twenty seconds to draw it. People have drawn one billion images using it, and Google uses them to make its "machine learning" better. You are given six items to draw and then it shows them all, along with providing you the ability to compare your creations with others.

Cities On Foot lets users create maps of favorite walking routes. I'm adding it to The Best Places Where Students Can Create Online Learning/Teaching Objects For An "Authentic Audience"

GameBuilder lets you create lots of different types of learning games - see the screenshot above to see the options. Once you create it, anyone with its url address can play. The site also has a large collection of games created by its users. The site is sponsored by Wisc-Online, which "is a creation of Wisconsin's Technical Colleges and maintained by Fox Valley Technical College." And it's free! I'm adding this site to The Best Websites For Creating Online Learning Games.

LiveWorksheets lets teachers either create, convert, or borrow existing worksheets and make them "fillable" online. You can create virtual classrooms (called "interactive workbooks") of assigned activities where teachers can monitor student progress. I'm adding it to the same list. Thanks to Nik Peachey for the tip.

Word It Out is yet another tool to easily create word clouds from text. I'm adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About "Word Clouds"

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The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education In 2018 - So Far

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As regular readers know, it's time for me to begin posting my mid-year "The Best...." lists. There are over 1,900 regularly updated lists now. You can see them all here. As usual, in order to make this list, a site had to be: * accessible to English Language Learners and non-tech savvy users.

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A collaboration tool that allows students to draw their ideas. Seems like a great tool for math!

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Scratchwork goes beyond the traditional online whiteboard model with usage scenarios designed specifically for classrooms and engineering teams and an api for developers.

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This resource so cool! It is a collaborative blog that can lead you anywhere! You can find explorations or document one of your own.

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Open Explorer is a community powered by our digital field journal platform. It's for everyone: university researchers to citizen scientists, students to professional explorers. If you have a story to tell or a place to explore anywhere in the world, you can do it here.

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It is important for us to work with those on our campus, but as the digital world grows, we are missing out on opportunities to be connected beyond our school! Check out Participate, a cost-effective way to connect educators around a common goal.

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Participate:: Everything you need to build communities of practice

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We build powerful spaces for collaboration and knowledge creation in online Communities of Practice.

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Check out edshelf, a socially-curated site with lists of educational technology tools to meet your needs!

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edshelf - A socially-curated discovery engine of websites, mobile apps, desktop programs, and electronic products for teaching and learning.

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A socially-curated discovery engine of websites, mobile apps, desktop programs, and electronic products for teaching and learning. First time here?

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A student response system and a grading tool for quizzes. It is free!

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The Answer Pad combines two powerful functionalities: it is both a student response system and a grading solution for your quizzes. An interesting platform for formative assessment in the 1:1 & B.Y.O.D. classroom. InteractiveOur version of student response, with

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Check out #EdTechChat every Monday from 8 p.m. - 9 p.m

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These are online software programs that allow users to do a number of different things.

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There needs to be a culture within the school that values the use of technology use in the classroom. (Dabbs, 2012). 

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There needs to be a culture within the school that values the use of technology use in the classroom. (Dabbs, 2012). 

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For more info, click the link!

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As educators, the use of Web 2.0 tools is transforming our work, and more specifically the way we support students in the classroom. As schools bring more technology into their classrooms, teachers will in turn strive to put more technology in their students' hands. That is, if they are prepared to do so.

Web 2.0 Tools are online software programs that allow users to do a number of different things. They can be used to teach curriculum content, store data, create/edit video, edit photos, collaborate and so much more. These programs are often free and are used by teachers, students, and sometimes parents, both in and out of the classroom, on a pretty regular basis.

The question then becomes, are educators prepared to use these tools? How can educators best plan to incorporate Web 2.0 Tools into their classroom? How can they best plan to ensure effective tech integration? How can they be sure that the tool remains a support piece to their instructional practice, rather than a replacement?

These are important questions that we need to be able to answer for our own work, but more importantly so that we can continuously strive to be a 21st century educator for our very important clients: our students. The use of Web 2.0 Tools to support instruction is vital. How we use these tools is going to make a critical difference in how we measure our students success and how they are supported to meet 21st century skill sets.

If you are new to this concept, don't feel bad. Embracing the use of tech integration in our daily work beyond word processing and power point presentations is still new to many educators. However, it's important that we accept the fact that Web 2.0 tools are here to stay. The sooner we learn to harness their wonderful power, and how they can bring learning alive in the classroom, the better.

As we talk about Web 2.0 tools, one point I want to stress is that we need to remember that it's not about the specific tools themselves that we use with students, but why, and when the tool is needed. Ideally there also needs to be a culture within the school that values technology use in the classroom. As a former school principal, I can guarantee you that the leadership in the school must also be modeling the use of technology, providing professional development in this area, and seek to build a school community that enables and values the effective use of technology for teaching and learning.

In the spirit of technology for teaching, I want to offer you 8 great Web 2.0 educational tools that I encourage you to seek out, practice with, and learn to incorporate into your work in the classroom. Will it take time to learn to use these tools? Yes. Are the benefits worth the time? Absolutely!
8 Great Web 2.0 tools to support you in the classroom:
Glogster is a great creativity site whose tag line is "poster yourself". A 'glog' is basically an online poster web page. Students can combine text, pictures, graphics, video, and audio to create an interactive online poster. They can click and drag items out of Glogster's resources, choose their own backgrounds, pictures, text boxes, videos, web links, and more! Glogster has a very simple-to-use interface. The final glog can be hosted by Glogster or you can embed it into a wiki, blog, or class web site. ( click here to watch a 2 minute EdTech Talk about Glogster.)

This site was designed specifically for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each of their students with their own, unique blog. Kidblog's simple, powerful tools allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over student blogs.

Linoit is a great service that provides its registered users with virtual "stickies" that can be placed on a canvas or bulletin board area. Both lino users and non-registered guests can post stickies on the canvas. The great thing about linoit is that you can use it at three levels: public, limited access and private.( Click here for a sample of one of my recent canvases.)
LiveBinders
Livebinders were created so that anyone, but especially educators, could do with digital information what we do with the papers on our desk - organize it into nice containers - like 3-ring binders on a shelf. With these online-binders, you can also upload your documents and easily combine them with your links in a neat and organized way. (Here's one of my livebinders.)

This web tool is an easy solution for teachers to open up their classroom and their students to a world way beyond their campus. With Skype, students can learn from other students, connect with other cultures, and expand their knowledge in amazing ways by communicating through their computer with a webcam.

This is a fun and easy-to-use tool for creating short, visual stories. Students can select artwork, drag and organize photos, and add their own text. These creations can then be published on the web with adjustable privacy settings. There is also the option to allow comments, which is perfect for teachers to encourage student collaboration. (Here's one of my Storybirds.)

VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slideshow that allows students to comment on images, documents, and video through text, video, and audio files. Teachers can set up groups and classes as well as moderate comments, embed to blogs, and export to audio files. It is an easy way to differentiate instruction while providing engaging choices to "show" learning, engage in conversation, and think openly and critically about content. ( Click here to see "What's a voice thread anyway?")

Teachers and students can generate word clouds that show prominent words in any body of text. Just enter text you have gathered from students, or even a URL, to see a summary of what the text is about. Wordle also allows you to change the appearance of your word cloud by the shape, font, color, and organization. ( Click here to see a short video on how to use Wordle in the classroom.)
Wetoku
Wetoku is a web service or Web 2.0 tool out of Korea that provides a simple platform for interviewing someone via the Internet. Collaborating globally is a must for our students and connecting can be a challenge. Wetoku makes doing an interview as easy as filling out some basic information, creating an interview session and then sending the creative interview session's URL to the interviewee. Once the recording is done, the interviewer can embed the copy of the URL into a blog or website. You will need a web-cam to use this tool. ( for a video on how to use wetoku.)

Okay, what do you think? Still not sure where all these Web 2.0 tools fit into your school or district standards? Well for those who are still skeptical, ISTE has developed a great set of educational technology standards for teachers. These standards, called ISTE NETS, seek to move beyond the tool and address the bigger picture of technology in the classroom and in the professional practice. You can take a look at them here.

I hope you've enjoyed taking a look at these 8 amazing tools!

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As educators, the use of Web 2.0 tools is transforming our work, and more specifically the way we support students in the classroom. As schools bring more technology into their classrooms, teachers will in turn strive to put more technology in their students' hands. That is, if they are prepared to do so.