The following Web 2.0 Selection Criteria was taken from the Tek Trek website and modified to suit our needs. Consider the following as a good STARTING point on building your own selection criteria.

Criteria 5: Learning

• Does the tool enhance learning?
• Does the tool enhance engagement?
• Does the tool allow you to be creative during the learning and instructional process?
• Does the tool provide opportunities for different types of interaction (visual, verbal, written)?
• Does the tool increase the perception of connectedness?
• Does the tool encourage collaboration?

Criteria 2: Access

• Is the tool accessible by Windows and Mac users?
• Is the tool / product of tool viewable in a variety of web browsers?
• Does the tool work well for those with wireless connections?
• Is the tool free?
• Will the tool be around for a while?

Criteria 3: Usability

• Do you have to create an account to use the tool?
• Is the tool easy to use?
• Does the tool have a robust and easy to use Help section?
• Does anything have to be downloaded and installed on the computer to use the tool?
• Does the tool integrate into your browser (plug-in, extension, widget etc.)?

Criteria 4: Privacy & Intellectual Property

• Does the tool allow you to restrict access of your work/your students’ work?
• Does the tool allow you to control access based on groups?
• Does the tool protect your personal data (e.g. email address given when account created)?
• Does the tool allow you / your students to retain sole IP rights to the content you create?
• Can you save a copy of the product to your desktop for archival purposes?

Criteria 5: Workload & Time Management

• Does the tool make it easy to track student work?
• Does the tool support private and public commenting (for individual and group feedback)?
• Does the tool provide for an RSS feed to track work via email or an RSS reader?
• Is it possible to embed the tool into the LMS you’re using?

The most significant difference between our list and the original Web 2.0 Selection Criteria posted on the Tek Trek website is that we have placed “Learning” at the top of the list and moved some of the”Fun” items from the original list to this position.

Make the most of Skype – free internet calls and great value calls via kwout

Skype is an internet phone, a video phone and a screen sharing app (with beta version) that sits on your computer and is free. Now technically it is not a Web 2.0 app because you have to download it but it is the tool that is most entrenched in the market.

With Skype you can phone any other computer that is running it and talk as long as you want for free. Video chat is also included when you call computer to computer. Skype also allows you to to call a land line but it will cost you (pre-paid) a very minor fee (2.4 cents a minute). And of course that means you can make calls worldwide for that price.

An added bonus with Skype is the ability to make conference calls via voice or video. And to round out the features Skype also includes an instant messaging service with the added bonus of being able to text message someone’s cell phone from your computer.

For the brave you can also get a cell phone that is Skype enabled which will let you use it on your cell phone to save money.

How can Skype help in Education?

• Set up a conference call with distance students
• leave your Skype enabled for times when you want to be at home but available to your students
• Record your calls/interviews (yes Skype does that too and remember to get the interviewees permission as well) with important people and play it back for students

As always you can voice your ideas as a comment on this post at the top and keep an eye out here for more information on tools like Skype that are fully fledged Web 2.0 (all online) and are just as good as Skype.

VoiceThread – About – Identities via kwout

VoiceThread is an interactive environment that facilitates collaboration on creating dynamic slideshows by allowing users to post comments, which are publicly viewable if needed, in a variety of formats including text, audio and video all delivered from either a computer or phone. In addition to this it allows viewers to comment by drawing pictures directly on the slides.

Although that is a fairly good shot at describing VoiceThread they do a much better job of it by showing what it can do which you can see here.( http://voicethread.com/#q.b409.i848804 and here http://voicethread.com/about/).

My description of VoiceThread is drastically condensed but it is a good base. When you watch a VoiceThread you are faced with a slide and pictures all along the sides, these pictures are the comments that people have left in either text, audio or video, a timeline plays along the bottom and is segmented for each person who left a comment. If you want you can skip all the comments and go to the next slide by clicking the large arrow on the bottom right.

So how could you use VoiceThread in Education? Well this is one of those tools that could be used for so many different purposes that I won’t touch on even a fraction of what can be done but I will try so here we go:

• Put up an image of a technical word (used in medicine perhaps) that needs to be pronounced correctly. Leave your own audio comment so they know how to pronounce it and have your students leave audio comments on that slide. It not only reinforces how to say it but they hear how the other students pronounce it as well.
• Students could use it as a way of collaborating on large projects and could be used as a way of documenting the process to show they actually did the work.
• Use it as a way of visual storytelling.
  Use it for creative writing exercises, post a series of pictures and have students commutatively create the story by having each person add to what the last person wrote.
• Use it as a forum for debate
• Use it for tutorials
• Use it to get to know your class

If you are interested in more I suggest you go to VoiceThread and browse ( http://voicethread.com/#q ) some of the ones that have already been created. Many of them are very creatively using the tool to fill gaps and really engage students in an open and non-threatening dialog.

One downside to VoiceThread is that for a student to use it they do need to have an account and although it is free it is another step they will need to go through to be able to use it.

In a recent conversation with a colleague I was reminded just how troublesome it can be to cut and past content from a Word document into a Blog, Content Management System (CMS), an HTML page or any other type of document or system is unable to deal with Word’s excessive formatting. Since I do most of my work online or in the Cloud I seldom use Word but instead use text editors like TextEdit, Text Wrangler, BBEdit, PFEdit and many more. Because I do most of my writing in a text editor I am not faced with dealing with Word until I inevitably have to open Word documents that come from other people. If I have to use content from a Word document the text editors that I use all have the built in ability to strip out formatting and return the document to a basic text format.

The issue of pasting content from word into a CMS or Blog can also easily be dealt with if you have JCE or similar type web-based text editor installed in your CMS or Blog. JCE gives you the option of stripping out all formatting from Word or similar documents by giving you a special Text Paste key that does all the work. Instead of doing a direct paste into the edit screen you use the Text Past key and paste the content into the past window and JCE does the rest. If you want to save some of the formatting from Word JCE also allows you to paste using the Word Paste key which preserves paragraphs, ordered and unordered lists and other basic formatting. Be forewarned you still need to tweak the content to deal with some of the excessive spacing Word sticks into it’s’ formatting.

If you do not use a text editor as your primary writing tool and do not have JCE or similar editor installed in your Blog or CMS, then you need to use a special tool that will strip out Word’s formatting from your clipboard when you cut and paste. Perhaps one the best tools for stripping out Word formatting in Windows is PureText. This FREE program runs from the task bar and all that you have to do to remove the formatting from the text that you have in your cllpboard is click on the PT. You can also right click on the PT for more options. PureText can also be configured to run as a hotkey so spend a bit of time on the PureText site to find the best way to configure PureText to solve your Word formatting problems.

If you are using OSX then you will find Plain Clip 2.0 just as powerful and perhaps even easier to use than PureText–it too is FREE. Plain Clip runs as a “faceless” application which means that it has no user interface (windows, menus etc.) at all and when you doubleclick it. You  know it is working by fact that all the formatting will be stripped out of the content from the clipboard. Its just that easy!

Firefox Add-ons via kwout

In the post Why Use Firefox I stated:

There are thousands of add-ons to choose from and with over 30 add-ons on my system. This is perhaps one the most important personal reason to use Firefox-you can make it do exactly what you want or need it to do.

I also indicated that I would be writing about extensions and plugins in future posts and this presents a problem. Do I write about all 30+ extensions and 12 plugins I use or do I just try to provide and overview of some of the best extension or the “ones I couldn’t live without”.

In this post I will identity Dwayne’s Top Ten Firefox extensions and provide a list of the ten extension that I load up first when I rebuild my system or experiment with a new OS or computer.

• Diigo Bookmarks and Web Annotations – In addition to enabling you to save your bookmarks so that you can access them anywhere on the web, the system allows you to highlight, annotate and put sticky notes on pages that others can see.
• Greasmonkey – This user script manager allow me to use a variety of greasemonkey scripts that help me enhance the functionality of Google Gmail and Google Calendar and so much more.
• Integrated GMail – Gmail and Google apps are fundamental to the way that I work, so being able to view my Google Calendar (Reader, Notebook, Groups etc.) in a collapsible view directly below my gmail (rather than in a tabbed window) make Google apps even more efficient.
• Kwout on Firefox – Rather than just providing a link to a website in a blog post or web page Kwout allow you to cut out a snapshot of the page that can be easily embedded creating and instant visual and text based citation for your link–keeps the copyright police happy.
• DownloadHelper – This slick extension makes it possible to download youtube videos and many other formats of video from the web–I only do this when I will be presenting in a location where there is no guarantee of  broad band internet access.
• Google Gears – With Gear you can use Gmail, Google Doc and much more offline.
• Toodedo – My current web-based ToDo list manager.
• WOT – Web of Trust warns you about potential spyware embedded in a site.
• Linkbunch – Captures all your open browser tabs and creates a link.
• GTD Inbox – Even though Gmail’s latest implementation of Move to & Label make some of the GTD inbox features moot, this tool is still must have to enable you to use the Get Things Done principle to organize your gmail.
• PDF Dowload – Gives you the options of how you want to deal with a PDF – download, open view with an external viewer.

Educational Applications:

While only Diigo, Kwout, DownloadHelper, LinkBunch and PDF Download have direct instructional applications because they all help one to organize and present content from the web, all these above listed extensions contribute to making one more efficient.  Furthermore, these extensions provide the easiest way to do things which ultimately saves time–which is, to an instructor, the most important commodity.

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Jing | Add visuals to your online conversations via kwout

Jing is one of the easiest tools to use to create screen captures and record and add voice overs to any onscreen activity. One can easily share what they have captured or recorded over the web, via IM or email.

The program works on both Windows XP/Vista and the Mac OSX. The free version offers all the features of the Pro – the Pro version just makes it even easier to share your videos at a higher resolution and allows you to export to the .mp4 format which enables you to edit the video in any video editing tool. Jing is made by TechSmith, the same folks who make Camtasia, and the videos are shared through screencast.com.

Up until recently I have only used the free version but decided to upgrade ($14.95 US) to get access to the higher quality video and the ability to export to .mp4. The following is an example of the video capture I created in just a few minutes:

Setting up Google Forwarding – View in “Full Size” for best quality

A few educational applications for this tool would include:

• Create a screen capture or video tutorial to explain a process, concept or idea.
• Comment on students assignments or work.
• Share a snapshot of a document.
• Collaborate on work.

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A.nnotate.com – Upload – Annotate – Share. Online document review and collaboration – PDF, Word and HTML via kwout

With A.nnotate you can upload pdf,doc, web pages, presentations and allow others to add notes, tags and other things to allow collaboration, evaluation or anything that you can dream up. It is all hosted online so now you can put up one document and send the link to hundreds of people who can then see it and annotate to it if needed.

The free service allows you to upload 30 pages per month and have unlimited commenters and a pricier solution for institutions allows unlimited everything for one server to be outfitted.

So what could A.nnotate be used for in education? Because the free version is limited I will limit my ideas to those that require the students to have accounts and upload papers of less than 30 pages per month.

• Have students get accounts to A.nnotate and send their papers to you the instructor for marking, this way they see nearly the minute you are done how they did.
• Use it for collaborative writing assignments
• Have the students critique each other before they submit papers
• Give it to students for note taking on their own papers

So what would or have you used it for?