• Daring to Enter the Blogosphere
• Electronic portfolios
• EPN: Education Podcast Network
• HigherEdBlogCon (a recent online conference that has archives of excellent screencast presentations on web technology in higher education, although much is applicable to K-12)
• Integrating Technology in the Classroom
• Keeping up with the Web
• Free essential software for the PC user

I highly recommend Will Richardson's book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, which I used as a resource for this presentation. And for the excellent, concise downloadable article "Tech Tools for Learning" that Will wrote, go here.

George Mayo's middle school students created a "Podcast Page" to accompany their online magazine Brandon's Online Magazine.

Age is not an obstacle. Students at Willowdale Elementary School create podcasts for "Radio WillowWeb: Radio for Kids, By Kids". Radio WillowWeb also has resources for teachers.

For an overview of podcasting for ELLs, go to Kenneth Beare's Introduction to English Learning Podcasts. Wesley Fryer's article "Classroom Audio Podcasting" is also good.

More importantly, Flickr is a great way to introduce beginning language learners to English, as Aaron Campbell writes in "Flickr for 'low-level' EFL students".

For an introduction to Flickr, read Giles Turnbull's article "What is Flickr (and Hot Tips for Using It)".

For finding free-to-use photos on the Internet, check out the list at Photoshop Tutorials Blog and the search engine Yotophoto. Of course, you can also find photos on Flickr. To do so more easily, read Eszter Hargittai's "How to find the best photos on Flickr" at Lifehacker.

For sources on using Furl and del.icio.us, Jim Wenzloff has a guide for using Furl (pdf). For a del.icio.us guide, try beerlerspace's "Us.ef.ul, a beginner's guide to The Next Big Thing" or go to David Muir's EdCompBlog to download the latest version of his guide to del.icio.us, which also includes the value of using RSS feeds.

How to use RSS?

• Begin with Bloglines, a great online reader. (Pretam Rai has written an excellent how-to guide on "Using Bloglines".)

Why to use RSS?

• Subscribe to all of your students' blogs
• Create search feeds for news groups and news (via Google News or Yahoo News)
• Create search feeds for websites and blogs
• For student studies and projects, you can get the current information on a topic or issue.

Will Richardson has a everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-RSS article called "RSS: An extended guide for educators" (pdf). He also has a post on why to use RSS Magic. The main point is this:

And maybe that’s the new strategy, get teachers and students rss-ing first. Give them a framework for understanding how disparate looking pieces of content really aren’t as disconnected as they seem, and that there are new ways to find and collect and archive ideas from any number of previously unknown places. That all this seemingly random creativity is really not so random at all, that it is “loosely joined” in ways that allow us to make it even more relevant and effective in our practice and in our learning.

Three free wiki hosts are wikispaces, pbwiki, and schtuff. One that charges a nominal fee is editme. I've used this one for my classes (see the goodwriting wiki).

Paul Allison has created a wiki, High School Online Collaborative Writing, on which the students at East Side Community School write on a tremendous variety of topics. Paul has his own blog where he writes about Weblogs & Wikis & Feeds.

Clarence Fisher set up a wiki at his middle school for studying history: Studying Societies at JHK. He has a well-written rationale for Wikifying Knowledge.

As we return to our study of Egypt this week, our wiki will become an active space again. Over the previous unit, as students used this tool for the first time, we learned a great deal about collecting and shaping knowledge. Students learned that they had to be active researchers, collectors, and designers of knowledge. They were interested in the fact that something written by one of their classmates could be added to, edited, and re - shaped by others. This was a new revelation for many of them. Starting to use this tool again this week, it first of all will be interesting to see if the kids still retain this understanding of using a wiki as a learning tool.

But he wonders:

But there is no original information that goes in to this space, it all comes from other spaces. So the question rises: is there any reason to use a wiki if we are using it only to collect information? Is it any different from taking regular notes on paper?

He responds affirmatively that there are some differences, differences of 24-hour accessibility, a public audience, and:

because the wiki is a space that anyone in our classroom can contribute to, it becomes much more then a single set of notes, it becomes an evolving, communal collection of our knowledge and understanding that grows in depth as our understanding does.

Using a wiki in this way also forces students to determine the importance and validity of information. Over the last unit of study, students were forced several times to confront the fact that they had posted information online that was not completely correct. They were forced to revise what they had written and re - think their understandings. Sorting, validating, and exposing overwhelming amounts of information is a skill that simply cannot be demonstrated or practiced using text that is not electronic.

I can't improve on what Clarence has already said, but I'd like to rephrase it. It is the interactions among the students and the recursive nature of re-visiting information that confronts them with contradictions between an individual's understanding and that of others, contradictions that lead them to reflect and re-construct their understanding, which in turn leads to a better understanding that is retained much longer.

It's important to realize that the teacher is a crucial element in wikis being used as more than a collection of information. As Clarence concludes,

although using a wiki to collect information can seem to be simply taking electronic notes, it can be a lot more.

Blogger.com Wordpress Edublogs elgg

Blogger is one of the oldest and easiest to set up and publish on. In just 3 easy steps, you're ready to begin publishing. In using blogs, either for students or for yourself, it's helpful to read other established blogging educators, such as in the blogroll on this blog. And Darren Rowse of Problogger has a good tutorial "Blogging for Beginners."

For a "personal learning landscape," consider elgg. Elgg is a community of learners where one can form "friends" and "communities" with others having similar interests. It provides a blog, RSS feeds, calendar, and file uploading. Its strong point is how it enables people to form communities of friends that you can easily interact with. For a thorough review of elgg, read "Elgg -- A Personal Learning Landscape" in the journal TESL-EJ.

One of my students, for example, took on a Japanese identity with the name Setsuna at her blog. She often used pictures and wrote about things Japanese, such as geishas:

Geishas are one of the things i'm interesting, to those of us raised in jeans and T-shirts, the world of geisha (or geiko in Kyoto)- with their elaborated hairstyles, white-painted skin, and heavy silk kimonos- is almost incomprehensible.

"Geisha must train themselves in various traditional arts such as classical dancing, playing the Shamisen, and several styles of singing in the hanamachi (geisha community.)"

Blogs can also promote interaction between students and others outside the class. Will Richardson's class corresponded with Sue Monk Kidd, the author of The Secret Life of Bees, and wrote a study guide for the book.

Teachers can use blogs to enhance student discussion and understanding. Darren Kuropatwa, a math teacher, uses his blog Pre-Cal 40S as an "interactive log for students and parents." Anne Davis created The Write Weblog for fifth graders to write about and discuss current events.

For a compendium of information and links to other articles and resources on blogging, check out "Blogging for Learning 2006" (wwwtools for education).