Awesome 2.0 Sites

ePals  Safely connect classrooms around the world through ePals. Aimed at all levels K-12, ePals assists teachers who want to out to other teachers as globally connected educators. 

"Students connect through email, video chat and a shared workspace to explore cultural awareness, global citizenship and the role culture plays in reading and viewing." ~ ePal 

Monster Exchange  A great way to digitally connect students around the world!

 "Monster Exchange is designed to encourage the development of reading and writing skills while integrating Internet technology into the classroom curriculum. Classrooms from a variety of schools worldwide are paired together; the students in each classroom are split into groups, each of which designs an original picture of a monster. The students must then write a description of the monster. The partnered classes then exchange their descriptions via e-mail and the Internet. These students are then challenged to use reading comprehension skills to read the descriptions and translate them into a monster picture. The true challenge involves creating a redrawn picture as close to the original picture as possible without looking at the original and using only the written description of the monster." ~Monster Exchange Site

ThingLink is a web based app which allows you to create an interactive image where you can embed audio, video and media links directly on images and share them across the web. This is a great way to create concept based interactive tools to use in the classroom. The ThingLink I have created helps students develop a  deeper understanding of Earnest Shackleton's epic adventure. It is aimed at tapping into all levels of learners in my classroom. Try scrolling over the image to find the interactive links. ThingLink has so much potential for teachers who want to push student learning beyond the classroom. I have created ThingLink pages for our civil rights study, geometry, Jamestown, the water cycle and the Civil War. The possibilities are endless. I like to create my own ThingLinks, but you can use ThingLink projects created by others, which can save a busy teacher a lot of time! 

Poster My Wall, a fun Web 2.0 site, which lets you create colorful posters. There are dozens of templates to use and the fonts are fun to play with. I created several posters that I used as slides in an iPad presentation that I recently did for our staff. You can share your poster creations via Facebook, Twitter, email or Pinterest. In addition you can opt to download your image as a jpeg directly to your device. Easy, fun and colorful, Poster My Wall is worth the look and a test drive.

Wordle and Tagxedo 

 Two word cloud sites that I have played with are Wordle and Tagxedo. Both are easy to use and have many options. First I watched a how-to YouTube video on each (Wordle video , Tagxedo video) and then dug in and started playing. There are so many classroom applications for both of these sites. Students will find building word clouds fun, easy and interesting to use. Teachers will come up with all sorts of uses for word clouds. Below, on the left, is the word cloud I created using Tagxedo to welcome my new students to 4th grade.  Tagxedo allows you to create a word cloud and apply fun shapes. On the right is a vocabulary word cloud created using Wordle for a geometry unit. Wordle is more linear, but still has many options for font and color combinations.  

 Padlet is an Internet application that allows people to express their thoughts on a common topic easily. It works like an online sheet of paper where people can put any content (e.g. images, videos, documents, text) anywhere on the page, together with anyone, from any device. Think of it like a multimedia friendly, free-form, real-time wiki.  ~ Padlet Site

I have used Padlet to create interactive bulletin boards for students to share their thoughts and ideas on any number of topics. I have attached the Padlet bulletin boards to both my website and my classroom blog making it easy for students to access from any device they are using. 



Jigsaw Planet

A great site for generating online jigsaw puzzles. Use the puzzles on the site or generate your own. This is a great way to introduce a new topic, concept or read aloud. Jigsaw Planet is easy to use. Upload your own images, set the number of pieces you want and generate your own custom jigsaw puzzle. iPad friendly!