Evaluation of one or more intriguing educational Web 2.0 (or 3.D) applications.

There are so many new tools, widgets, gadgets and apps available in this world now that it boggles the mind. The ease of communications and speed of information sharing is shrinking our world. There is free online phone service that can be audio or visual. There are bookmarking sites, social networking, blogs and wikis, online picture storage, instant sending of documents and even the ability for multiple users to work on the same document at the same time. The collaborative possibilities are endless. Here are a few of the ones I like and/or have worked with.


Google Earth…It has the coolest maps and can take you to the moon, out into space, under the ocean, the Roman Coliseum, or your own house. I took a workshop this last winter that taught me how to use Google Earth to create a Lit Trip. This fall, the Librarian and I are going to teach an entire unit about the Iditarod. We are going to use Google Earth to create a virtual trip that allows the students to travel along with the mushers from check point to check point. Last year our Latin team used it with the middle school to study ancient Rome. It is an amazing educational tool. Not to mention that it can give you great directions to the nearest restaurant that lets you bring your own wine.

http://earth.google.com/


Skype…is a free phone service. You can call via your computer for free to anywhere in the United States…international calls have a fee. You can also make a video call so that you can show Grandma in California how cute the new baby puppie is. We used it in my lab last year to talk with two schools with whom we were collaborating on a global poverty project together. The schools were in California and India and the time zone issue was tricky. Still cool though!

http://www.skype.com/




SketchUp is an architectural software package that allows the user to create 3D models of
anything they want. It can be used for designing a new school, gymnasium, anything needing math equations to create and to help study architecture in general. We used it in tandem with Google Earth, last year, to study Chicago architecture and design our own houses. Like anything created by Google is has plenty of training videos and a huge community of users that are happy to help in any way.


http://sketchup.google.com/index.html


Pandora…is a personalized radio station that you create yourself. You choose a few songs and it starts to recognize the kind of music you like. It offers song suggestions and genre suggestions as well. It plays on your computer in the background so you can do your work and listen to music you like any time you want to. I use it to create radio stations for the different grades that I teach. We listen to everything from High School Musical stuff (bleck!) to classic rock to Linkin Park. We’ve used it for researching music and to expand the musical tastes of my sometimes narrow minded students. Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin ROCK!

http://pandora.com/