31. 10 Collaboration Tools for Students and Teachers Collaborating online is a good way for students and teachers to communicate and engage each other in classroom projects. There are many different fee-based tools that can help with this, but there also a number of free tools that work just as well. The following ten collaboration tools are free and well-suited to an education environment. HotChalk – HotChalk is a free learning management system that makes teacher/student collaboration a breeze. Teachers can manage classes, assign work, receive homework from students, communicate with students and parents, and streamline the teaching process. Wikidot – More than 2,000 education wikis have been created with this wiki-maker which allows easy collaboration, private sites, and unlimited pages and revisions. Wikidot is free unless you would like to remove the ads from the wikis, in which case, you will need to pay $5 per month. NoteMesh – NoteMesh was made for college students but can be accessed and easily used by students in any grade. This free note collaboration system works like a wiki and allows students and teachers to create a unified collection of notes for any class. Wridea – This free application offers a set of tools that allows multiple people to brainstorm together online. Users can set up an unlimited number of idea pages and then categorize them, share them, revise them, and comment on them. Thinkature – Thinkature offers real-time collaboration for the web. It includes a voice chat and a workspace where people can share documents, images, ideas, outlines, diagrams, and more.
32. Stixy – Created specifically for people who want to collaborate online, Stixy works like a web-based whiteboard. Users can paste photos, notes, to-do lists, documents, and other items onto a board and share them with other people. SimplyBox – The American Association of School Librarians recently named SimplyBox one of the best websites for teaching and learning. The SimplyBox tool allows students and teachers to clip and share portions of the web in a safe, controlled environment. Diigo – This unique research tool can bookmark sites, permanently archive web pages, and highlight and annotate portions of the web. Anything that has been marked with the tool can be stored in a personal learning network or shared with a private group. Yugma – Yugma is a free web conferencing and desktop sharing tool that works well for students, teachers, and parents who want to collaborate online. Up to 20 attendees can be present on a Yugma conference at one time. Zimbra – Zimbra is a web collaboration and productivity suite. The free version of Zimbra includes email, file sharing, an interactive calendar, search features, and much more. Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online degrees for OnlineDegreePrograms.org. http://sharetheaddiction.edublogs.org/ March 12 2010
33. Scribd where I can upload my docs and pdfs for embedding into my wikis. Youblisher is a new one I’ve just started playing with (thanks Allanah for the post that alerted me to this one). I like the page turning effects and the overall look but am not sure that I like the way it takes you out of your site to view it or the fact that you have to zoom in to be able to easily read standard sized text. I do like the fact that it looks neat and tidy on the page when embedded and that it is super easy for people to download by clicking the down arrow beneath the embed. It is interesting that I can’t seem to find where to get the embed code when looking at other people’s books – I only seem to be able to access it when I create my own books. Today I also signed up for Issuu which is another self-publishing platform. This one is very customisable with different ways to embed the document and three different views: one called magazine style with the two pages, presentation style with one page at a time, and paper style with pages that you can scroll down through (like Scribd). I like the fact that you can view an embedded book in full screen mode and then change between the viewing styles using the options that appear when you run your mouse over the top centre of the book space. You also get very good statistics for the document. You do still need an account to download the document though like Scribd. Jan 31 2010
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