Web 2.0 Resources
The list below is an ever expanding list of free resources, now over a 100 tools, that can be used
in a classroom either by students or teachers. Each utility has a review and I provide a link to
the site so that you can download the tool should you wish to use it. I will endeavour to keep
the links up to date, but am not responsible for any site or service mentioned below. Please use
them on an as you find it basis.
I have thought hard about how to categorise these links, I have concluded that alphabetically is
better, reasoning that if you do not know what you are looking for then alphabetically will
suffice.
Free resources for use in the classroom:
Alice: Alice is an animation tool that enables students to quickly create a 3-D environment as a
game platform or as a programming tool.
Anasazi Animator: This is a free program that allows you to create stop motion movies.
Primarily designed for claymation type videos using web cams, other armature type character
animation techniques could also be used. This program has an onion skin feature which ghosts
the previous image in the next frame so that you can see how much and what to move for the
next frame to create realistic and fluid animations. Software for a labour of love!
Apture: This utility is embedded into your blog, wiki or webpage code and allows you to embed
and link to almost anything on the Internet from your page. Rather than use links to send
people away from your site, this utility embeds the links and keeps your browsers on your site.
Excellent stuff.
Arcademic Skill Builders: An online tool from the University of Kansas. This site offers a range
of basic skills literacy and numeracy games that are either multi-player or single user. Simple to
use, great for practice or re-inforcement type sessions or as a regular part of your tumble.
Art Rage: This is not quite free! Not a good start, but if you are a New Zealand educator then it
is almost as good as free. Once you have established that you are a State school then the
charge is $1 per seat. However if you want the trial version, it is completely free but does not
have all the tools activated. It is a really good tool for creating great art work, without the mess.
You Tube has a number of very good tutorials demonstrating how to work your way around the
interface, just what you need to get your students started, the rest is all creativity!
Audacity: This is a free audio recording tool. With this tool you can record your own audio
tracks and export them to .WAV or .mp3 formats. To create the .mp3 format you have to
download and install the free Lame encoder. Audacity is great for creating multi-layered audio
recordings and is ideal for podcasting.
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Audiotool: This tool must be the best music creation tool on the net. It allows you to create
and mix your own music, generated from a range of tools that you select and plug in, complete
with cables. Each tool looks and operates like its real life counterpart, enabling great levels of
control and creativity for your students.
AVG: The guys at AVG have consistently produced an excellent anti-virus package for years.
Their latest free variant 8.5 also includes spyware and mail scanners as part of the build. A very
cool tool for stand alone machines, with no domain management tools on the free edition, this
is not really a solution for network protection.
Aviary: I have just learned of this site and its cloud computing solutions from Jacqui Sharp.
What Aviary offers is a range of ‘bird’ named services that enable the user to create and edit
content online. I have yet to fully play with their range of services, but have had a look at their
audio editor and its interface looks a bit like Garage Band. It certainly enables multi-track audio
recording with a range of free tracks that can be used to get you going. Well worth an explore,
I am off to investigate their vector graphics offering now.
Blender: Blender is an open source 3-D animation tool that can create almost anything that you
can imagine in 3-D. It has a game engine and is a very advanced program. There is a thriving
community of users out there and You Tube is full of tutorials to get you started. The interface
is daunting, but stick with it, the end results are worth the effort.
Block CAD: This program is a virtual LEGO set. Students can create their own objects using
regular LEGO bricks, ‘pegs up’ only. Each block can be moved in increments of 90 degrees in
the horizontal plane. Payment can be in the form of a single LEGO block sent to the creator
with a postcard from your location, some interesting learning could come out of that payment!
Blogger: Google’s free blog platform. It has many features which make it more immediately
user friendly than say Wordpress. You can embed almost any widget into a blogger blog. Great
starting point for those wanting to start a class blog.
Bricksmith: This is an open source LEGO building CAD program for Macs. I have not tried it.
bubbl.us: This is a great online mindmapping tool. Free to register and easy to use.
Bubbleshare: Bubbleshare remains here as a timely reminder that free things might not last for
ever. Spread the risk, by using more than one service for the same function. Bubbleshare
ceased to exist in November 2009.
Cacoo: This site is an online collaborative drawing tool. It has loads of pre-loaded icons for you
to use in a drag and drop manner, it enables you to create flow charts, mind maps, network
diagrams etc from the extensive palette. You can upload screenshots, it has a tool to capture
them, you can also upload your own images to the diagram. You can add text, but it is not a
freehand drawing program. Quite a cool tool, but limited in its scope if you can not create what
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you want from their palette of pre-loaded images. The great tool, however is the ability to
collaborate in creating multiple diagrams and to then be able to embed these diagrams into
other places. The home page has a good video outlining the basic features. It is free to sign up.
Cam Studio: Cam Studio enables you to record your actions on your computer, great for
creating tutorials. Cam Studio saves to either AVI or SWF formats for sharing with others. It
has some great in built tools that can be edited or create your own to customise your
presentations.
Canorus: This is an open source cross platform music score program in a similar vein to
Sibelius. You can create music in on the score sheet import/export to and from MIDI files.
Considering the cost of Sibelius this looks like it could be a seriously viable alternative.
Chaos Pro: This utility is a fractal generator. Students can explore the infinite beauty of fractals
and experiment with variables to create their own unique creations. Their tours can be
animated and saved as an AVI file for sharing with others.
DavMail: For those of us contmplating the end of the MS schools agreement and thinking of
creating a blended envrionment, this program looks like it could be a viable alternative to
Outlook. DavMail integreates with Exchange on differing formats POP/IMAP/SMTP. We are
currently looking into this program to test its viability within a blended Linux/Windows
environment running Open Office on the clients but retaining an Exchange server in the middle.
Dimdim: Dimdim is an online tool that enables virtual meetings to take place. Powerpoint and
pdf files can be shared with the participants, audio and video are also supported. There is also
the facility to use a virtual whiteboard and to share desktops.
Dipity: This is an online tool that allows you to create a timeline of embedded resources from
Flickr, You Tube, Blogger, Wordpress, Picassa or any rss feed you like. The resultant time line
can then be explored and zoomed into to illustrate a sequence of events, great for cause and
effect. Lots of potential for e-learning here.
Easy Podcast Creator: Once you have created your podcast show in Audacity, this utility creates
an xml file for you to include in your website/blog/wiki etc so that your listeners can subscribe
to your offerings.
Firefox: Not IE, what more can I say? Great selection of plugins to optimise your browsing
experience, reliable, stable and oh not IE, but you know that already.
Flickr: A photo storage service, allows you to upload, geo tag and share your images. You can
also use their widgets to embed images onto your blog/wiki or website. Thriving community of
users.
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Fotobabble: This tool is a really nifty and embeddable altertnative to Photostory. Fotobabble
allows you to upload a single image at a time and you can then record an audio track over the
top. A great tool for the classroom, with hundreds of potential applications.
FreeNas: FreeNas is an open source headless (no OS required) Network Attached Storage
system. This system will allow your network administrator to breathe life into old drives,
without additional software licencing issues. It can be operated from a thumb drive and
controlled via a web page interface, giving you addtional storage capabilities for back up
systems.
Freeplay Music: This site has thousands of tracks from different genre’s that are free for school
use. Please take the time to read their licensing page, as you can not publish their music in any
capacity other than for school based activities. Despite this, this is a great resource for schools
and students to use.
Gamemaker: Mark Overmars’ free program. Now available from yoyo games. This tool allows
you to create simple games to quite complex multi-level games. Great for students to use as a
thinking and problem solving tool.
Gimp: Can’t afford Photoshop? This free Open Source photo editing software allows you to do
pretty much all that you would want to do with Photoshop, but costs nothing. Interface takes a
little getting used to, but once over that minor headache, a great tool for students to use to
create and edit stunning images.
Glogster: My tool of 2009, I love this tool. They market themselves as an online poster, not a
promising sales pitch. However, a great end point for student work. Glogster enables you to
capture audio, video and images from your computer, your web cam and microphone or the
Internet and embed them into your Glog. Lots of cool looking templates to play with, the trick
is to get the students concentrating on the content rather than the look.
go2web2.0: A great site to have an rss feed to. This site catalogues all the latest web 2.0 tools
and widgets to hit the scene. A lot of it is not relevant to an education environment, but I have
found some gems in there.
Google Chrome: Google’s browser offering. It has some great features, most obvious is the
ability to search from the address bar.
Google Docs: Google’s online offering of Office. Compatible with Office file formats, has some
limitations with regard to attachments, but great for collaborative work with students.
Google Earth: Google Earth is a fantastic tool with the community adding data daily. Create
your own tours, embed your own videos, explore cities in 3-D. Heavy on the bandwidth so use
wisely, but an indespensible tool for the school.
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Google Sketchup: Google’s 3-D model creation tool. Create almost anything 3-D in Google
Sketchup. From a set of really simple tools and rules it is possible to create accurate renditions
of buildings that can then be sited into Google Earth for others to use and share.
Google Wave: Yet to be released buy given the pedigree, looks as though it could be a
communications revolution. One note of caution, it records every key stroke you ever make
and keeps them for future retrieval. Those concerned about Google’s invasion of privacy
accusations should look very carefully at how they might use such a tool and not compromise
their own personal sense of security.
Google Maps: Now embellished with Google Street View in certain places, maps have suddenly
got very interesting. Google Maps allows you to create and make public your own maps with
information embedded into your own map pins. Great for getting student work to an authentic
audience.
History Pin: This is a new and fantastic mash up between old images and Google Maps/Street
View. History pin encourages members to share images of landmarks an upload them in
location and compare them between the current view in Street View and the historical view.
You can search by date or era. It is a rapidly growing resource and is great for social sciences
and history in particular. I love it already!
Hot Potatoes: This free program allows you to create a range of online tests and resources for
your students. It is shortly to become freeware, but at the moment it is freely available for
educational instituitions.
Hugin: Hugin is an open source, cross platform application that enables the user to
‘digitallystitch’ an array of images together into a panorama. In conjunction with the
Enblend360 add on it is possible to create an evenly exposed 360 degree spherical panorama
which can then be embedded into your website or uploaded to 36ocities for geotagging on
their website.
I Know That: This is a great online resource for teachers and is well worth spending the time to
find out what is on this site. I especially love the problem solving puzzles. There is no need to
join you still get full functionality without joining.
Inkscape: This program is an open source vector graphics program. It shares many of the
features of similar commercial products such as Illustrator, Freehand etc.
Jing: This is a cross platform screen capture program that allows you to capture screen shots or
video and audio of your screen. Great for creating tutorials. The free version is the lite version
of the commercial application you can upgrade to. The free version only outputs video files to a
.swf format.
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Joost: Joost is a video site that collates broadcast programmes into different sections. It is free
to subscribe and the site has a continually growing collection of shows for you to watch. The
content is there with the permission of the copyright holders and so therefore are of a good
quality. Worth subscribing to.
Juice: This is one of many podcatchers out there. If you want to subscribe to podcasts, but do
not want to use iTunes then this kind of program is for you. All you need is the rss feed location
and the program does the rest.
Keeptube: This little beauty allows you to download and save multiple You Tube videos at once.
For those of you that have band width issues, this means that popular videos can be
downloaded once and then linked to from your Intranet, saving bandwidth. It also means that if
you wish to use a particular video in a presentation, you can now embed your chosen You Tube
video into your slide show. Great stuff!
Leo Cad: We can’t use the word Lego here… however this program has Lego looking building
blocks that are uncannily similar to the real thing. Students can create a virtual model and then
animate it. A bit tricky to start with, but worth the effort.
Listen Music: This is a great music repostitory. You can search music from almost any genre
and time and this site will turn up complete album lists, lyrics, tracks to listen to and
biographies of the artists. If you become a member you can make playlists that you can share.
Great for music teachers or even background music in your class.
Livestream: Formerly known as Mogulus, this is an on-line TV station. You can plug in a web
cam and do live broadcasts. You can cue between the live feed and pre-recorded videos. You
can have a ticker running along the bottom of the screen, logos or even a test card when you
are not transmitting. This one will really kill your bandwidth!
Mee Genius: This is a new site that caters for emergent readers and would work well with an
interactive whiteboard, although it is not a necessity to have one. The good guys at Mee
Genius have started to create a library of interactive texts for big book readers. Check them
out.
Mind42: This is an online mind mapping tool. Once you have logged in you can then create an
interactive mind map that allows you to link to other resources on the Internet, it allows you to
put notes, images etc onto each of the nodes in your map. Once complete it is then fully
embeddable into blogs, wikis and webstites.
MindMeister: This mind mapping tool is similar to the Mind42, however this variant allows you
to be able to collaborate online on the same map with others at the same time.
Moodle: Moodle is an open source LMS designed primarily for universities but is finding its way
into secondary and primary schools. It is well supported with lots of additional modules
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specifically created for the education market. A lot of up front time needed to master this
program, but the end results provide a powerful LMS for you to tailor to your organisations
specific needs.
Mozy: Mozy is an online back up and encryption service. The service costs if you wish to back
up more than 2Gb of data. However for your most precious 2Gb of data that you could never
do without, this is a very good tool. You can set a schedule, select the folders you wish it to
back up and then let it get on with it. Every time you add a new file to your selected folders
Mozy automatically backs up all the new content and encrypts it for you.
MSW Logo: Fantastic program this. Introduction to programming for students of all ages. The
basic building blocks are easy to learn and where you can go with this program is only limited
by your imagination and time of course!
Musicovery: This is a web based tool. It is a music site to suit your current musical tastes. You
can select by, era, mood, tempo and genre and then search for the music you want. It is a tool
that I can see not only as a way of carrying your favourite tracks with you where ever you are
sitting.
Netvibes: This is a great aggregator of rss feeds. It will organise your online life! You will need to
create an account and then you can modify the widgets there to keep track of almost anything
that you wish to!
NXT programmes: Whilst the NXT kit is not free, this site is a good resource for free programs
that can be downloaded and installed onto your NXT, a great starting point for students and
how to build complex programmes.
Oodesk: Oodesk is an online OS. It is a free service and once you have registered and logged in
you are taken to your virtual desktop complete with mail client, graphics, presentation and
wordprocessing packages. It has its own multimedia player and has lots of other editable
features. Worth a look if you are online a lot from differing computers and on differing
networks, it is your virtual office in the cloud.
Open Office: Open Office is an open source alternative to MS Office. It contatins presentation,
drawing, spreadsheet and word processing programmes and will read and write to any existing
MS Office formats. In addition it has its own in built PDF writing capability. A very good tool
and it is free.
Open Sim: I have long been intrigued with the potential for Second Life to be a fantastic
learning environment. However creating a walled garden in SL is troublesome. Open Sim is an
open source program that enables you to create and host your own world and avatars on your
own servers and control who has access to your environment. It has to be compiled and so is
not for all of you, but it is worth the effort.
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Paperrater: This is a service that you could use as a teacher to ascertain whether an
assignment is a cut and paste or plagiarised document. It is also useful for assessing the
strength of a documents structure for editing. Just copy and paste your text into the space
provided and let the algorithms do their work.
Pencil animation: A fantastic tool that is just like a traditional animators desk. It has very few
tools to master and is a very uncluttered interface. It is simple to master, yet the range of
results that can be obtained are not constrained by the programmes simple interface. Fantastic
tool.
Photobucket: This is another photo storage site that allows you to upload and organise your
photos into albums. It has a neat range of skins for you to punk your page with and also has a
wide range of slideshow animations for you in order that you can embed your albums into a
range of other web sites like your blog, wiki or facebook page etc.
Photopeach: This is a great online utility that allows you to upload images and organise them
into a slide show. You can insert their default backing music, or use You Tube or even upload
your own music in mp3 format. This last option is the premium upgrade and that costs $3, not
a lot. Once you have organised your images and chosen your music you can annotate your
individual images, a nice feature here is that you can create a quiz on your images, this might
make a great literacy exercise. Unfortunately you can not record your own voice over each
image, like Photostory, but it comes a close second.
Photostory3: A really neat tool for Windows users only. Photostory does exactly what it says on
the title, it allows you to create a story with photos. You can add text, a voice over and
background music, really easy to master and the end results can be published to the Internet.
Pivot Stick Figure: I have used this as a good introduction to stop frame animation, the students
get very inventive and produce some interesting animations. Only downside, I have not found a
way to export the movies into a format that can be played outside of the program itself.
Readplease: This is a great utility for reading text back to you from any document or screen.
Great for students and also for those of us preparing texts. A great way to check our work.
Rocket Dock: This little utility is a beauty! It is a shameless copy of the Mac OSX dock,
complete with spring loaded animation to expand folders, this has to be downloaded and
installed separately. Of no educational worth, but a great deal of fun and allows you to keep a
clear desktop if yours is, like mine was, cluttered up with shortcut icons.
RockYou: This is another Java slideshow utility that allows you to upload photos and organise
them into cool slideshows, then embed the slideshow into a blog, wiki or website of your
choice. They also offer other services like ‘glitter text’ that allows you to add additional bling to
your website.
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Sam Animation: This is another claymation type animation tool. The free download has a few
utilities missing from the paid variant (which is cheap if you feel you must have it.) What I like
about the program is that it can capture from your webcam or digital camera still images, but it
has an onion skin layer which is in effect a ghost image of the previous frame. This allows you
to create smoother animations. It comes in Mac and Windows variants.
Science Net Links: This site offers a series of number challenges to make students think. Great
as part of a range of activities for your group work in a literacy lesson.
Scratch: Scratch is the latest educational computer programming offering from MIT. It is a
fantastically intuitive program that allows students to build programmes using snap together
block to manipuate sprites on the stage. A great tool.
Screenhunter: This is a commercial application that comes in a free, but stripped down,
variant. It allows you to grab portions of the active window you are working on and paste the
resultant image into a range of applications such as Word.
Scribble Maps: This is another great mash up between Google Maps and another app. You can
overlay a map with your own annotations, add text and link to images in order that you can
create a patchwork of information in a 2D space related to location. A great resource and
especially useful for Geographers, Historians and social scientists. In fact that should not limit
anyone!
Scribus: Scribus is an open source DTP program that would replace MS Publisher if you were
looking to remove Office from your computer. This program offers all the DTP functionality
that most users would want.
Shapeshifter (AniBoom): This is another animation package, a bit like Pivot. Only this one is
entirely online, no programmes to install and has a more graphic quality to it. You build up your
shape with basic building blocks and then animate. A simple and intuitive interface and when
combined with CamStudio a real winner I think.
Skrbl: This is a collaborative online tool. Skrbl is a collaborative whiteboard that multiple users
can comment on at the same time. Users can write and draw on a blank page or on top of
resources placed on a fixed layer below the collaborative content by the owner of the session.
Can get messy, but if a protocol is created for users to abide by, a very powerful tool.
Skype: My IM of choice. Skype enables you to not only IM with your contacts, but call them
free with video if you choose to use it from computer to computer. If you upgrade your
account to Skype in and Skype out you can calls to any telephone in the world at very
reasonable rates. Skype in allows you to divert calls to your chosen device if you are offline.
Sloodle: Sloodle is a project to integrate Moodle and Second Life. The Guys at Sloodle are
creating a walled garden for educators to take their students’ learning into SL, but without the
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potential career jeapordising content of SL unleashed. Looks like a tool well worth
investigating.
Songbird: Songbird is the media player offering from Mozilla. It has functionality like iTunes
and has many ‘feathers’ and add on’s that you can download to fully customise the Songbird
environment to suit your needs. The interface also doubles as a browser and has the ability to
search for song lyrics while you are listening to your collection. Cool tool.
Spybot: Spybot search and destroy is an extremely powerful malware attack program that
allows you to surf the Internet with all the nasties blocked at the browser level. A great bit of
code that needs to be supported.
Stiqr: This is a great looking tool that allows you to add real creativity to your wiki, blog or
website. There is a little snippet of code that needs to be embedded on your site and then the
application runs.
Stray Relay: Need good quality music for backing podcasts or productions? Dan Hess and the
Stray Relay at Venis productions have created a massive library of royalty free music for you to
download and use, providing you credit them on all works where you have used part or all of
their music. Plenty of choice here to suit a wide range of tastes and situations.
Story Jumper: This is a great tool for literacy. It enables students to create their own story
from a range of genres. The end product is a book with text and images created or adapted by
the user. Once the book is published it can be read like a real book with a page turner
animation and sound effect of really crisp thick new paper. I have not found an embed facility,
but other readers can be notified via e-mail and I guess that a url link from a blog or wiki would
suffice. Looks good worth investigating, especially for older students creating resources for
younger students.
Survey Monkey: This free utility allows you to create your own online survey. The free option
limits you to the number of responses you can collect, but if you know that you want to collect
a large survey sample, say from your parents, you can purchase the service for month blocks.
The interface is very intuitive to use when you are creating your survey and you are kept
informed of the results as they come in.
Synchtube: This online service is a similar concept to Tokbox, except it is more stripped down.
What it offers is the ability for multiple viewers in multiple locations to all see the same You
Tube video at the same time. Great for collaboration, especially if linked with a service like
Twitter to enable instant feed back. Worth a look.
Synfig: Synfig is an open source cross platform animation programme. It is similar in nature to
Flash, it allows you to create key frames and the programme then does the tweening for you.
The interface can take some getting used to, but worth persevering with.
~ 10 ~
Tagxedo: This utility is like Wordle. You can link to website, paste your own text or add an RSS
feed and it will arrange them into a tag cloud for you. You can even organise them into a range
of pre-defined shapes. The big difference here is that unlike with Wordle, you can save your
tag clouds as .png or .jpg files and download them to your computer for further use, no more
screen capture moments and fiddling in image editing software.
Teamviewer: This is a great utility for remote access and sharing desktops. I have installed the
iPhone app available for this program and have been able to control my PC remotely. Great for
sharing ideas or remote teaching if you want to demonstrate an application, as yet I have not
experimented to see if Skype can be integrated with this application.
Tinkernut.com: This is not really a utility, but is a great site for tutorials demonstrating how to
get the best out of your software and also highlights some of the backdoor deficiencies in your
trusted software. Some might call it hacking, but I think that it is more eye opening and
enlightening. Great for reality checks.
TitanPad: This tool is a really simple online collaboration tool. You can up load .doc, html and
.rtf files for collaboration on. Each editor is assigned a colour to indicate which part of the text
they have worked on. No log on and easily shared, this is a great tool for the classroom.
Tokbox: Tocbox is a great tool, rather like Skype. The key difference with this tool is that it
allows more than two people to have a video conversation at one time, the site claims that up
to 20 different users can be in the same video chat at the same time. I have not tried this, but I
expect that bandwidth would be an issue. For me the ablility to easily send video e-mail is a
great utility, it will allow students who find typing a chore an easy way to communicate many
ideas or resources in a video e-mail very quickly. Well worth the look.
ToonDoo: This is an online resource that I think has a lot of potential for the classroom. It can of
course be used for humourous cartoon strips and they will have their place in school too. I think
however that this resource can be used to help children sequence ideas, storyboard films, tell
short stories, even create graphic type novels… This tool, especially with its ‘book’ facility will
enable tons of literacy and integration type activites to happen in the class. You can upload
photographs and then add callouts on the site, so it is similar in nature to Photostory3. Once
created, your toons are then fully embeddable in wkis, blogs and on websites. Take the tool and
bend its potential, have fun!
Tutpup: Tutpup is a free numeracy and spelling site. It pits students of the same ability from
different locations on the planet in timed. rapid fire basic facts contests. A teacher can set up a
class and can keep track of individual student progress. The site awards Hall of Fame status to
students who perform well. The site keeps track of your work over the last day, 7 days, month
etc. Students design their own user name based on a choice of animal, colour and number, this
then becomes their online avatar on the site.
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Twitter: Twitter is a micro blogging site that enables you let your followers and the rest of the
world, who cares to tune into your tweets, what you are currently up to.
Ubiquity: Ubiquity is an addon for Mozilla Firefox users. What it endeavours to do is to make
searching the Internet more human. Its algorithms try to interpret your human search terms. It
is a tool that is constantly being refined and updated.
Unity: Fantastic tool this, a heavy hitter. Unity is a 3-D game engine that allows you to create
and test your game in a 3-D environment. Plenty of support materials and the ability to import
content from Blender, Maya and Photoshop to create the game environment. Your game can
then be exported to different platform formats, however the options here on the free version
are limited. Great thinking, open ended learning potential for senior students.
Virtual Box: This tool is a good one for Mac users. This free open source utility from Sun
Microsystems allows you to create virtual machines on your computer. Therefore on your Mac
you can have a virtual machine that runs Windows and another one that runs any Linux variant
that you wish.
Viper: This is a tool that you have to download and install. Once installed it will scan your
documents for plagiarised content. Great for those school cut and paste assignments that still
exist…
VLC Media Player: VLC Media player is an open source media player. It does much more than
that however, it will allow you to stream video over your network, great for security video, it
will also allow you to stream directly to the Internet.
Vocaroo: This is probably the easiest tool to use on the Internet. In three clicks you can capture
student voice and embed that recording in a simple player into your wiki, blog or website. I
have used this with students as young as Year 2. Possibly the coolest tool on the Internet for
the ease with which you can integrate e-learning into your classroom.
Voicethread: Voicethread is similar in nature to Vocaroo, however Voicethread offers more
functionality and is in effect a converstaion or a series of recorded statements built around a
central resource that can be either a video or a static image. Simple to use, but can take a little
setting up in order that young users can be independent. Great tool.
Wallwisher: This little utility is great. It allows you to create a wall of virtual post its. You can
use this with students to explore ideas and collate them as they start on a new project or
investigation. This tool is fully embeddable.
West Point Bridge Designer: I love this tool. This tool has been developed by the US Military
Academy at West Point. Every year there is a competition to see which team can build a bridge
that meets the criterior but also the most economically. This free tool allows your students to
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design, build and test (often to destruction) their creations. A great technology project for
someone.
Widgetbox: This utility allows you to create your own widgets for your website, wiki, social
networking site etc. It allows you to create bespoke widgets, embed Flash or HTML code or
simply use an RSS feed.
Wikispaces: This should not need any introduction, but if it does, wikispaces is a free wiki site.
It allows you to create a wiki for yourself, your class or whatever your need is. Wikis allow you
to embed all maner of widgets to pull together or aggregate feeds from all kinds of locations on
the Internet.
Wix: This tool was shown to me and it has loads of embeddable potential. The interface can be
a little labyrinthine to get through, but perseverance pays off. I guess that the power of the site
is the customisation potential and therefore its complexity. Despite this, this site is one of the
best widget making sites I have thus far encountered. Great stuff.
Wolframalpha: This is a computational search engine. It is not designed to replace Google but
rather it allows you to compute dispirate statistics instantly. Lots of good stuff in here and it is
constantly being updated, however the syntax can take some getting used to. The help section
is very helpful and I would suggest spending some time in their before launching into the site
proper.
Wordle: Wordle is an online tool that allows you to paste a selection of text into its interface; it
then generates a ‘tag cloud’ of the most common words and gives emphasis to them. You can
tailor how the final product appears. A fun tool that also has a lot of educational uses and
applications for those that like to think outside the box slightly.
Wordpress: Wordpress is a blog site service. It comes in two variants the .com version will host
your site for you at no cost, but it can be a little more fussy about what it will allow you to
embed into posts and what widgets it will allow you to use. The .org variant is a complete
blogging service that you host on your own domain and this variant allows you to fully
customise your site. This blog is a .org variant.
Xp Image resizer: This is one of the power tools for Xp. It is free from MS and it re-sizes images
in batches or individually for you to a pre-determined size, ideal for re-sizing images prior to
uploading to your blogs, wikis or photo sharing sites.
Xp Timershot: Another offering from the Xp power tools stable. This utility allows you to
capture images from a web cam at pre-determined time intervals. The resultant collection of
images can then be placed into a movie editing programme and made into a timelapse film.
Easy to use and has many educational possibilities.
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You Publisher: This is a great bit of visual bling for your PDF files. The code makes the pages of
our PDF flip like a magazine or a brochure. Great for student work. It is not embeddable, but
the service provides a link for you to navigate from your site to theirs.
Zamzar: This is a free online service that allows you to convert almost any file into another
format that you wish. Great for converting .flv video files into something that you can play on
your computer or mp3 player.
Zoho: Zoho is a complete suite of online tools that are designed to increase your online
functionality. It is free to join and is well worth spending some time with the range of 18
applications for you to choose from to ascertain just how you could utilise these tools in your
classroom.
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