Web+2.0

http://reading.ecb.org/ This website will bring you to a educational site (Into the Book) that will give mini lessons on different reading stratgies as well as give students the opportunity to practice each skill through a variety of games and activites. The website is student friendly and allows students to save their material so that they can continue working at a future time. Students will listen and follow along with mini lessons that are recorded from a real classroom of students. After listening to the short lessons, students will apply their new reading strategies to a variety of activities that resemble video games. The teacher center has hundreds of ideas and lessons that can be used as follow up activities to ensure student mastery. Lessons can fit into any time frame with the saving application and work great for independent student centers.

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php This website is great for educators of all grade levels and subject areas. RubiStar allows you to create a variety of rubics for any assignment and projects. Templates have already been created that allow you to use as is while you also have the option of changing existing rubrics or creating your own from scratch. The website lays out the information in a easy to read and easy to grade format. Rubrics can be saved to be modifed at later dates as well as make public for others access. This website will save you a lot of time when you want to create a concrete way to grade student work.

http://www.glogster.com/edu Glogster has an educational branch that is great to use in the classroom. This site allows you to build a page that can be private and blocked from outside viewers. Teachers sign up for free and then create accounts for their students. Once signed in, each person can create interactive posters that can be used in a variety of ways. Students can create posters to introduce themselves at the beginning of the year, demonstrate knowledge on a biography, and so much more. My students love this site and it is very user friendly. Again this site is geared towards elementary students although teachers could incorporate interactive posters within their lessons to engage students while teaching.

http://www.skype.com/ Skype is a great way to have penpals in another city, state, and even country. This free web 2.0 site allows you to video conference with someone else with a Skype account. Along with video conferencing, you can download games and other interactive tools such as a whiteboard to collaborate. Skype could be used to take an interactive tour of another school, or listen to a lesson from a teacher in another country. Students could also teach a lesson as a end of the unit assessment to another class in anothe state. Students could learn about other cultures through the voices of people from other countries. So much can be done with this site, webcam, and microphone.

http://www.oovoo.com/  ooVoo is a free web 2.0 application where you can connect with anyone at anytime–through video calls similar to Skype but the advantage of oovoo is the ability to conference up to six people at the same time.  With ooVoo, you can do so much more than video conference. Enter chat rooms, leave video messages for friends, customize your calls with creative touches, send files such as pictures and uploaded videos, and so much more with one simple web tool. Search for lesson plans that incorporate skype and adjust it to allow students to chat with six people at once. Hold book talks with students from all over the country and even world wide or have students teach an English lesson to different classes in various countries. The possibilities are endless and students will learn essential skills for the work world such as collaboration, critical thinking, speech, and presentation. Students will be highly motivated to do their best work knowing that strangers will be evaluating their projects and ideas.

http://animoto.com/ Animoto is another free web 2.0 application that has a pathway for educators to use in their classrooms. The site allows users to create videos in a short amount of time by simply uploading pictures and adding text and/or audio and clicking done. Animoto does the rest of the work! This tool is great to make videos to inspire, teach, review, and even live old memories.