Today I was invited to speak to the Science Department at Clayton High School about the use of web 2.0 tools. Since then, I have spent some time brainstorming what science 2.0 might look like.
I can think of many tools that could be used in today’s school 2.0 science classrooms.
Nine Free Tools and One that is Worth the Money
1) Google Spreadsheets – a free way to create a collaborative data sheet to record the results found during an experiment. Documents could then easily be published to a wiki to create an online lab sheet.
2) Slideshare.net – a free way to host your presentation files online. Works with keynote and Powerpoint presentations. I recommend exporting as jpegs before uploading to the site.
3) ed.voicethread.com – use to make online observations of experiments, to discuss methods for balancing equations, and to discuss current events in science. One teacher account with 100 students costs around 60 dollars.
4) Google homepage – a free way to organize all research, online discussions, and current events via RSS feeds that are seen each time the browser is started
5) wikispaces.com Free k12 wiki – a free public or private wiki for K-12 teachers to use in classrooms. Use to create an online textbook, an online lab book, or a website for students to share links and to conduct discussions. Media can be embedded from any web application that shows embed code.
6) Vimeo – a free video hosting site that allows users to upload video up to HD quality. Users are provided 500 MB per week of upload space. Use for publishing student videos, teacher tutorials, and other video files. All video is embeddable.
7) Jing Project – a free video capturing software for both windows and Mac. Use Jing to capture smaller size screencasts from your desktop.
Bubbl.us – a free concept mapping or idea mapping web application much like Inspiration. Use to map out the connections between science concepts such as the food chain or the water cycle.
9) Diggo – a free social bookmarking tool that can be used to annotate, bookmark, and share web content. You bookmark a site and your colleagues (”friends”) find out about it. Think of it as sharing your favorite articles and websites with the world.
10) Create a Graph – We should end with a fun one. Use this free tool to create fun graphs to include in reports presentations.
While not every one of these tools will be something that is useful in your classrooms, if you are just starting out, I am sure you can find something on this list to get your students collaborating.
