TeckLearnEd: Thing 11 | Web 2.0 Tools

Current estimates place the number of web 2.0 tools at somewhere between 300 & 500 with only a handful emerging as market dominators. That is crazy! I believe that and possibly more!
Most are duplicates and random versions of each other like the Zoho Writer & Google Docs.

Discovery Exercise: For this discovery exercise, we are asked to select any site from this list of Web 2.0 Awards nominees and explore it.

I looked at the above link for the awards. It is unbelievable that amount of categories for web 2.0 Tools there are. Web 2.0 technologies and social media tools are really every day affecting how public and private institutions function and deliver services.

Exploration

Explore one of these, create and animation and then embed it into the blog.

I believe Free apps, wikis, gadgets, etc are more appealing to the end-user. It strikes you away a lot of times when product providers want you to try for a limited time of 7 days and then after that pay 14.99 monthly. For a teacher, it is not within the budget or the means to do so sometimes. More ways that formats can be available to teachers to find effective, handy, worthwhile web 2.0 tools to use for reasearch and the classroom would be great.

DoInk

I looked at DoInk. I currently have used GoAnimate and decided to choose the Web 2.0 Tool that would have me learn something new. It is a great website that allows you to create flash type animations using your own drawings. I have used DoInk before, however, when I went to the website it mentioned being on a sanitarium rest. I was unable to create a @DoInk Animation (like below).

Voki

What is Voki? Voki is a FREE service that lets you:

Create customized avatars.

Add voice to your Voki avatars.
Post your Voki to any blog, website, or profile.
Take advantage of Voki's learning resources.
You can also make a voki classroom....

What is Voki Classroom? A classroom management system for Voki

Students do not need to sign up!
Add and manage your Classes & Students!
Lesson pages automatically created!
Customized appearance & instructions!

Here is my VOKI! Aren't I cute!!! You can add voice to your voki to. I didn't because I had to pay a fee to get that feature. That is only thing I didn't like about Voki. It was almost like you get touch but you couldn't. I would have loved to add this to my classroom website. It would be a picture of me talking to my class and walking them through their online assignments. Nice!

I also tried Schoology.

Schoology allows teachers to manage lessons, engage students, share content, and connect with other educators. Schoology definitely has classroom uses. I can see myself using this feature not just for the classroom but for managing recruitment and volunteers at church.