Web+2.0

[|Diigo] Diigo highlights and sticky notes are persistent in the sense that whenever you return to the original web page, you will see your highlights and sticky notes superimposed on the original page, just what you would expect if you highlighted or wrote on a book! See more here.

[|Digital Pencil] highlights some educational uses of of wikis. Also, allows students to write journals and teachers to leave comments online.

[|Google Zeitgeist] - Grades 6 - 12 Want a concrete indicator of public curiosity and concerns from the source they use most? Try Google Zeitgeist. This simple tool tells what people are searching most on Google (country by country), correlating it to the news and other major dates. Use the links to Year-End Zeitgeist or Zeitgeist Archives to see full-year trends. For example, use the 2008 summary to see the spikes in certain Google searches connected with events during the 2008 U.S. political campaigns. Get a quick snapshot of popular culture "hot topics" or personal concerns during tough economic times, simple by seeing what people are searching on Google. If you are trying to build world-awareness and 21st century learners in your classroom, keep Google Zeitgeist handy to spark discussion and curiosity.

[|Museum Box] - Grades 3 - 12 Veteran teachers know that a multi-media approach is often the best way to introduce information to students. Museum Box is a tool for collecting, organizing, and sharing digital artifacts such as images, sounds, videos, links, and files around a common theme or topic. The "box" looks like a divided crate, containing eight six-sided "cubes" in each of three "layers." Each cube can be a different aspect of the main topic. The concept is based upon the work of Thomas Clarkson, an 18th century British abolitionist, who carried with him a collection of artifacts in order to demonstrate his beliefs to his listeners. See the sample "Thomas Clarkson's Box."

The tool is user-friendly, using drag and drop and visual cues to guide you through the process. Developed for use by teachers from the Eastern Britain region, the Museum Box tool -- and products created and //published// by teachers and students using it-- can be seen anywhere on the web. E2BN has created Museum Box for education, so it does not have the safety and security risks of a general public web tool. Only teachers from the E2BN service area can set up school accounts and "connect" student accounts to a teacher's account. If you are from E2BN's area, your students can submit their work to you for review before publication all within the site’s tools, and you can comment back to them confidentially. Teachers using this system have complete approval-control before publication.

Important note: ONLY students from eligible schools can "publish." Classes anywhere can see the published products being shared on the site. Students from anywhere can establish account to create and PREVIEW museum boxes of their own. If you create work from a non-E2BN school, the only way for people to see it is to log in and "preview." If you give out the log-in information, you will risk having others change or delete your work, so share it in person on a projector if this is a concern.

Standards for the UK are included in the teacher area. There is also a reminder that this tool places images, etc. on the web, so copyright is a concern. Under Fair Use, U.S. educators cannot share copyrighted materials on a generally-available web site. As long as you keep the box unpublished, however, you are limiting distribution and are within Fair Use. Be sure to require students to provide the source of any image, sound, etc. as part of the cube. 9806 The site's most serious drawback is that it is a British site, and in order to make full use of all its bells and whistles, one must be a teacher at one of the registered British schools. That being said, the virtual museum boxes that have been assembled by classes or individuals in these schools can all be accessed regardless of where you are located. Students can also assemble a virtual museum box, but it cannot be shared without registering on the site. Our editors contacted Museum Box to find out more about possible membership for non-UK teachers, but we received no response.
 * In the Classroom:

Because this form of digital collecting may be new to your students, you will want to create a sample first. To set up an account (UK teachers), enter the Museum Box area ("Start") and click "Save." You will have the option to join for free. Only a username and password are required, so you can start right away (no email confirmation). Even if you find the membership restriction too limiting to have your students creating boxes, you could create a sample, and then have them create similar collections on a class wiki or even in PowerPoint (with hyperlinks to web-based images and artifacts) or Google Docs. Museum boxes can hold: evidence to argue sides of a debate, student essays with multimedia supporting evidence, literary magazines in visual and verbal form (poetry, images, even sounds), research collections to assign to students (links, images, and sounds to pique their interest and send them out to learn more), student art and writing portfolios arranged in "cubes" by theme or time, collections of local history artifacts (photos, interviews, scanned images, etc), and much more. With younger students, you could create the box collaboratively as a whole-class activity. Consider creating a few class accounts and assigning small groups to create a box, with one student assigned to a "cube" within the box (to avoid damaging each other's work). || [|Poll Everywhere]. A commercial service that lets you create free classroom-size polls (up to 30 responses). Text or input responses via the Web, then download the results to a spreadsheet, import into PowerPoint, or place on a Web page as a widget.