WEB 2.0 & E-LEARNING

NOTE: These sites are being utilized in Wave I of the pilot LEA development and integration. These are not intended for open student use until a strategic deployment plan has been tested and evaluated by NCVPS and the WAVE I districts. NCVPS and the WAVE I pilots are researching best practices that balance between innovation and security.

In studying and/or promoting web-technology and elearning tools, the phrase Web 2.0 can refer to a trend in web design and development - a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services (such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies) which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users.

Technologies such as weblogs (blogs), social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds (and other forms of many-to-many publishing), social software, and web application programming interfaces (APIs) provide enhancements over read-only websites. (Source wikipedia, 2008)
Some examples that NCVPS and LEO use with students, parents, and educators, click on the links below:

Blackboard
Blackboard improves educational experiences with Internet-enabled technology that connects students, faculty, researchers and the community in a growing network of education environments dedicated to better communication, commerce, collaboration and content.

Google Talk
A Google approach to online conversations, chats, and meetings. Also, a part of Google applications for education including gmail, calendars, websites, and more.

Meeting Wizard
Use MeetingWizard to arrange and schedule meetings and other events. As a productivity tool it makes the planning process easier and more effective.

Elluminate
Elluminate is a leading provider of live Web conferencing and eLearning solutions for the real-time organization. Serving corporate and academic sectors, the company ensures the best user experience through superior quality VoIP, communications that are in-sync regardless of connection speed, broad cross-platform support, and advanced yet easy-to-use
moderator tools.

Wetpaint
Free wiki websites that offer educational support and limit advertising that may be harmful to minors. Great way for students, teachers, parents, and educators to communicate with 21st century tools over the web.

Bloglines
While Google Reader may be newer and shinier, it's still missing one feature that I deem to be important in the world of Web 2.0, and that's the ability to connect people together.

Picnik
There are a plethora of image editing sites in the world of Web 2.0, but Picnik stands out for a few reasons. For one thing, it's pretty. The site is well laid out, easy to navigate, and incredibly
intuitive.

Jumpcut
With free video editing solutions like iMovie and Movie Maker readily available, you might wonder why I'm including an online video editing service in this list. Jumpcut allows students to work on their
digital stories from any computer in any browser.

GCast
With Audioblogger gone, GCast is recognized as the most popular platform for MobCasts (podcasts created via cell phone).

Google Docs and Spreadsheets
I'm sure that there are 100's of features missing from Google's version of Word and Excel, but I can't seem to figure out what they are. Docs and Spreadsheets also has one clear advantage over the desktop version: it's collaborative.

Vyew
This is a pretty specialized application that really has more application for tech coordinators and trainers than it does for teachers in general. This is essentially a free webinar solution, similar to WebEx and Elluminate. It does have features that you'd normally pay tens of thousands for, such as the ability to share PowerPoints, whiteboarding and the holy grail of webinars, desktop sharing.