What is the web and how does it work?  (Discussion)

Our Wall on Wallwisher:

Resources to get web pages, links, files and resources on the internet:

A web server that will host a website you create. That web site may be created using Frontpage, Dreamweaver, HTML coding, Flash, or any other program.  You develop the web and then publish the website to the web server.

A web site that all web editing is done through a web browser.  This may be a Word press site, Google Site, Blogger site, SOCS or other site for hosting your school information.

Lets look at a few of these:

Blogs: What is a Blog?  Blogger (owned by Google) will host a free blogging site for you. Here is my blog post, on why to use Blogger in your classroom.

Wordpress.org is a open source blogging software that  is run by many sites including Wordpress.com where you can get a free Wordpress web site for your use.  An example might be our Band teacher's, Dr. Lee.

Google sites:  Overview  and home page

Twitter is an example of a micro blogger.  You can embed your tweets right into a web page, or even within a facebook page. Visit the Twitter Widgets page: http://twitter.com/goodies/widgets or this article: How to Embed Twitter on a Website

Edmoto is Twitter on Steroids for education.  Ever thought of using twitter in the classroom, this is the tool for you!

Facebook may be coming soon to a school near you.  (Schools are often still blocking this, so we may not spend a lot of time on this one for now.)

You need to be able to find some great resources and things on the Internet, so you can utilize those within your classroom and online content.

Finding information on the web:  Using the Norris Searching links page, we will look at how to find information on the web. Remember... not all information on the web is good information. -- A short side step... A cause we should all be concerned about!

Cool Tools For Schools - collection of Web 2.0 tools and sites

Additional resources you can use and incorporate within your online content:

• Glogster - Educational resource for creating poster type pages
• Voicethread may be a great way to have students do digital story telling- http://voicethread.com
• Do a web quest...Examples of a web quest:  Chris Boesigers site.  or something similar... a Jog...JOG THE WEB is a web-based tool that allows anyone to create a synchronous guide to a series of web sites. Really cool! Check out the web 2 tools for kids Jog.
• Tiny Chat -  create a free, secure chat room, accessible with a browser, by giving the link to those with whom you want to chat.  Participants do not need an email account.  Once the chat room is closed, the chat data is gone.  The chat room data can be saved as a text file.  (Maybe this is a requirement for an online class that you teach.)
• You can even stream classroom events or activities: http://www.ustream.tv/

Developing online quizzes Our Norris page has a listing of resources available to you.

What is a WIKI?
Wikispaces offers it's Plus Wiki Features free to educators.  (The free educator version offers premium features including private Wikis and more.) This is a great way to add a Wiki to your web presence.  Our ESU 6 TIG (Technology Integration Group) has a nice Wiki site.

Putting your classroom or activities calendar online:

All of these sites are free resources:
www.4teachers.org has many great free resources. Their Assign-A-Day calendar option is nice for it's clean calendar view and nice mouse-over effect. Sample Calendar. They even have a design your classroom drawing tool.

Teach-ology offers a nice online calendar for posting your class activities and assignments. (This is a favorite calendar site for K-8 teachers! It has a young student look to it.)   Take a look at my Sample Calendar.

The calendars net site also offers some nice free calendar services.

What I recommend:
Google calendars offers a nice free calendar site. This site also allows you to import your calendar items from an export file from Outlook or other calendar programs. It will even text (sms message) you to remind you of an event!  I would recommend this since it is a part of Google apps for education. (Norris staff- Use Google Calendars. This is your best option since we use the Google Apps for Education.)

Using games and puzzles in the classroom:

Visit the Norris Puzzle Site

Make some great games for your website:  Teacher Invaders, Fling the Teacher, etc http://www.contentgenerator.net/invaders/default.shtml  Here is an example of an activity on one of our teacher's pages. : http://www.norris160.org/socialstudies/harringtons/GLOBAL/FinalReviews/mereview.html

Remember...the Hot Potatoes program will make web pages with your puzzles you can post online. (We have already looked at this program.)

Surveys and interactive polls:

Interactive Polls for your website: Quia's new subscription service includes survey capabilities (Click here to take a sample Quia survey). This site was already featured above.) Or check out the sites below for free polls that can be added to your personal website / class page:

• Sparklit Web Polls  
• Pro Boards offers free discussion boards and other tools
• Survey Monkey is a nice service and the free plan will do for a lot of our needs.
• Zoomerang is a site that will do email surveys via email for you. The free plan may handle all of your needs. (Norris has a pro account.)

What we recommend for Surveys:

Google Forms. More information can be found here. (Norris staff- Use Google Forms. This is your best option since we use the Google Apps for Education.)

Google apps for education:

Sample of a shared spreadsheet: Web 2.0 tools

Sample of a shared presentation: 45+ ways to use Wordle in classroom- a great Google Doc presentation.

Norris Google apps page

Bighugelabs has some great resources!

Make a map, and notice the HTML code that you can embed. http://www.bighugelabs.com/map.php

Make a cool Movie poster! http://www.bighugelabs.com/poster.php

Finding clipart and photo's on the web.

Check out Noel's Clipart and Photo links

A few selected clipart sites:

• Pics4Learning offers a nice collection of Pictures that can be used for education
• Discovery Schools Clip Art Gallery: school.discovery.com/clipart
• Cool text will develop your text for you! Type in your message and your done. Flaming Text  (Does have pop-up ads.) and 3-D text maker offers a unique flavor of text and images.
• Classroom Clipart  (Free for students to use.) (Does have pop-up ads.)
• Microsoft's Clipart site. (Will even download into your clipart collections.)

A list of photo sharing, photo developing and digital image resources sites.  Check out the links to edit pictures online without installing a program on your computer.

30 Essential Online Converters for All Webmasters

Book marking and keeping track of web sites you visit  A couple of optional sites for keeping track of your book marks and sharing your book marks with others include:

•  iKeepBookmarks allows you to upload, and keep, your bookmarks on the web. You can access them at any time, from any computer... anywhere! Mybookmarks is another option for the same type of service. And they're both still free
• http://del.icio.us/  Delicious is a very popular newer bookmarking site. (Requires a Yahoo ID -Free) Add a quick bookmark link here: http://delicious.com/help/bookmarklets  (No longer owned by Yahoo so not recommended anymore.) 
• You can sync your Google Chrome Bookmarks, extensions and other settings from anywhere. Find out how.
• Probably the best one: Diigo  You can also add a Chrome Extension for Diigo.

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