In no particular order, we’ve listed our 10 favourite web tools for teachers. Eleven, actually! We hope they are of value to you and your students. Best wishes for a fantastic year.
Moodle
- the best open source Learning Management System on the planet, full stop.
- requires a system administrator to setup the LMS for use by educators and students
- best used in a teaching and learning context
- easy to use communication and collaboration tools all contained in one program including blog, chat, messaging, forum, podcast, rss, wiki and more
Joomla!
- the best open source Content Management System
- requires some technical expertise for CMS setup
- the ultimate solution for website design
- forget about the need to use dreamweaver or hard code html, just tweak the css and php
- massive user base, excellent forum support and heaps of extensions such as community builder and virtuemart
iGoogle
- your personalised Google page
- get yourself organised and bring your favourites bits of the web to one space
- add news, photos, weather, and stuff from across the web to your page
- easy integration with other Google services such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Reader
- ajax technology and customisable widgets abound here!
- a free online network of more than 30 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries
- your user profile helps you find and be found by former colleagues, clients, and partners
- your network consists of your connections, your connections’ connections, and the people they know, linking you to thousands of qualified professionals
- find potential clients, service providers, subject experts, and partners who come recommended
- be found for business opportunities, search for great jobs, get introduced to other professionals through the people you know and more
- this is NOT just another social networking site! it’s also a microblogging service
- answer one simple question in 140 characters or less: what are you doing now?
- follow others and be followed
- public or private
- send and receive updates via mobile
Wikipedia
- a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project
- wikipedia’s articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information
- written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world; anyone can edit it. Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference websites, attracting at least 684 million visitors yearly by 2008
- more than 75,000 active contributors working on more than 10,000,000 articles in more than 260 languages
- currently 2,660,750 articles in English
- every day, hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world collectively make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles to augment the knowledge held by the Wikipedia encyclopedia
Skype
- the utlimate web communication tool
- good for conferencing with colleagues, students, friends or family!
- free voice, video calls pc to pc & cheap to call landlines & mobiles local or overseas
- instant messaging, chat and sms
- skype in, skype out
Flickr
- a free image sharing service owned by Yahoo!
- easy to organise and be creative with your photos online
- choose to make public or share with groups, friends and family
Youtube
- a free video sharing service owned by Google
- view and upload videos
- browse, search videos by keyword tags
- great for visual demonstrations and case studies
Del.icio.us
- social bookmarking site
- take your bookmarks wherever you go
- share your favourited web site urls with others
- browse or search recommended community tags to learn about useful sites
Technorati
- currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media
- the recognised authority on what’s happening on the World Live Web, right now
- blogs and other forms of independent, user-generated content are organised
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