Literacy 2.0

This has got to be the coolest thing!  You can insert the URL of a website and Awesome Highlighter will allow you to highlight in different colors and then email  your highlighted page to someone.  You can also add notes.  This is great for “leaving tracks of your thinking”  in reading as demonstrated in The Comprehension Toolkit.  Kids can highlight the main ideas in one color and the details in another.  They can do their research and add their notes, then collect all their resources to begin writing their paper–all online.

There are several websites that allow you to create tag clouds.  Try different ones because you might like different ones better for different purposes.  For instance, I like Tag Crowd for finding the main idea of an online passage, but Wordle or ABCya for student created tag clouds.  Word Sift allows you to sort words in various ways such as A-Z or Z-A or most common to least common or vice versa.  Tagul has lots of neat features, but you do have to sign up to use it.

Into the Book may not be Web 2.o, but it is a great tool to use to model reading comprehension strategies.  Students could also use it during literacy stations.

Use Sort Fix to help students learn to refine search terms.  They can add words or exclude words.

http://zimmertwins.com/

This is an easy to learn way for students to create their own movies.  They can use it to create fiction stories, or share expository research.

Mixbook -This online Photo Book software allows you to create personalized Photo Books, Photo Albums and Scrapbooks . You can create and share online for FREE.

Blabberize is a free program that lets your pictures talk. You upload a picture in which the person, or animal, is facing the camera and has their mouth closed (that gives the best results). Blabberize is a fun website that can be used in a variety of ways in your classroom! You can tell a story, have children read and share their own writings, give a book talk, share learning about a unit, the options are endless. All you have to do is go to the site, sign-up for a free account and follow the step-by-step directions.

YouTube Alternatives-freetech4teachers

Teacher Tube

Edublogs TV

Nibipedia

Hulu

Ted-Ideas Worth Spreading

Wow!  Wow!  Wow!

Ideas to Inspire is a collection of collaborative presentations, which offer a large number of ideas for engaging lesson activities.  They are the result of the collaboration of teachers from all around the world.

Podcasts can be a great way for students to write for a real audience (besides the teacher).  Podcasts can be audio only using Audacity (free download and super easy to use) or can also use video and/or other images.  The Our City Podcast is one example.

Great ideas abound on the Internet, but here is one of my favorite new finds. Ideas for Podcasting in the  Classroom