Come Together

Collaboration is a powerful tool.  Students now have the availability to all work on the same document, share ideas with each other, and the entire world. Students and teachers  can truly come together to make authentic works and share with ideas with each other.  Below are Web2.0 tools that I thought could be valuable for Collaboration.

readwritethink.org -  Readwritethink.org is a collaborative reading and writing site with information for teachers, parents, and after school tutors. This website offers lesson plans,  interactive technology sites, strategies for professionals, and a professional development library. This site could provide great ideas for differentiation in the classroom for students with disabilities.
wikispaces.com -  Wikis are a great tool to share and communicate ideas. For example: I have set up a wiki for our Special Education Department at Clarke Middle School to post and share useful links and forms. Wikis can be edited by most anyone and are a great source for up to the minute news and events. Classroom wikis can have information about assignments, useful and helpful links for a given area of study, a place for students to post their ideas, links, and findings. The possibilities of using wikis in the classroom are almost endless. I think that Wikis are great ways for students to comment and elaborate on their learning. Also, Wikis, can be a great way for students to organize their work. For example, a student could have a wiki that links all of their web 2.0 tools to one place. Wkispace is free for educators and is a very easy way for one to share information to their classes. With Wikispaces one can also include widgets in their posts and edits.

PBworks - Pbworks is another site that offers free wikis. PBworks is my preferred host for wikis. I tried setting accounts up on both wikispaces and pbworks. PBWorks has a side bar where one can add folders to help better organize material. PBWorks is a great way to share links, ideas, and presentations.


Zoho.com - Zoho is a cloud computing web2.0 service. Zoho has a few free components but most of the service is pay.  Zoho offers a suite of applications for personal, business, productivity,  and collaboration.  Students can benefit from Zoho by being able to share and access their documents from any computer.

 2learn.ca -  2learn.ca is a website from the Canadian Educational Department that shares helpful web2.0 links with others. The mission of 2learn.ca is to collaborate and share technology rich resources

http://checkvist.com/ -  hCeckvisit is a free or subscription based web based collaboration/outliner/ To-Do list that one can share projects and To-do list with others. Your To-Do list can be exported into html or onto wikis or blogs. Also, you can create tag for your to-do list or outliner.  Google Docs is a wonderful way to share and to collaborate. I have just now really began usuing Google Docs. I for see Google Docs as a way that will transform education. Google docs is free and offers word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software. Students can collaborate on group work using Google Docs. Students can peer edit, collaborate, and work simultaneously on projects. Google Docs can also be accessed from any computer anywhere with internet access. (For this spreadsheet I have worked on three different computers) Google docs is especially beneficial for students with disabilities due to some built in features such as spelling and grammar check, the availability to save information online, and the availability to share with others.