Web+2.0+and+Open+Source+Sites

www.edublogs.org Edublogs is a blogging site geared at creating a safe environment for students and teachers to collaborate and share ideas. There are three versions of the site: free, premium, and campus. Even the free version allows teacher and students to share their writing, videos, and pictures with each other, leave comments and discuss their posts. Upgraded versions present even more capabilities such as group Wikis and personalization of each student's own blog. As a personal user of this site in my classroom and with students, I can say this is one of my favorite sites out there for safety and personalization. It only took many of my 3rd graders about a week to work with the site before becoming independent!



http://www.epals.com/index.php ePals is a global website where classrooms from around the world. Teachers create profile for the class with language and age range, as well as what they are expecting from the partnership (such as email exchanges or Skype sessions). This site allows students to connect with different projects, join forums of other students to discuss books and other cultures, and learn about ways to be a good citizen to people all over the world through service projects.

media type="custom" key="19823200" align="left" Check out this introduction to voicethread, an online site where visitors can leave voice, video, or text comments on pictures, videos, and presentations. Students can create a voicethread, view others on a public or private forum and all content is protected!



http://www.collaborizeclassroom.com/ For anyone interested in transitioning into the "Paperless" classroom, here is a great place to start! This site is FREE and allows teachers and students to host discussions, share resources like videos, documents, and websites, access the topic library of shared lessons.

@http://www.sliderocket.com/ Sliderocket is an online or mobile presentation site, similar to PowerPoint. The free version allows users to create engaging, interesting presentations in a non-traditional way. Add bar graphs, pictures, audio and video to your presentation, and determine a theme. This site is compatible with Google Docs and can be shared with peers to collaborate on the same project.