Engaging WEB 2.0 Tools to use in the classroom

Create living maps with sound, stories and images

One way of creating meaning and relevance behind stories is to use illustrations and photos of various kinds. An even more powerful way is to add sound to a story to really capture a particular moment or event. Imagine including all of these features and then being able to add them to the exact location on a map. This is what MapSkip offers its users: create stories around a particular place.

After registering with the website find a location you wish to write about, for example the Normandy landings in 1944 or examine coastal erosion on the North Norfolk coast, add a ‘marker’ in the shape of a hand and a small box with a form will appear where you can give the place a name. Now you can also upload a photo or drawing, and why not include an MP3 file which captures the fierce fighting during D-Day landings? Another good idea is to create longer investigations with a class and keep adding to the map as you work through a unit, for example as they discover more about an individual’s journey, they can create a very detailed, meaningful and relevant story about this person. Imagination is everything with this tool and students tend to think of 100s of ideas about how they can demonstrate their understanding of a topic or unit. This is a superb educational tool.

Perhaps one of the ingenious tings about MapSkip.com is the fact that you can use it with students as you can set up additional accounts for classes using your email. There is a similar tool called VidMap.com which allows you to add, yes you guessed it, videos to exact locations on a map, also a very innovative tool.

Another poll tool? Not quite. It would be to simple to describe Ask500People.com as yet another poll service. The premise behind this WEB 2.0 tool is based on New Yorker columnist Surowiecki argument that we tend to trusts experts and distrusts the wisdom of the masses but “under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.” His book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few is a real gem. Sorry losing track…anyway, the idea behind the website is to provide real people’s opinions about real issues ranging from questions such as ‘Do you ever turn off your hot water heater to save electricity?’ to ‘Is it possible to look sane with a knife in your hand?’. Voting happen in real-time so you can see answers appearing whilst browsing the site.

It is simple to register and set up questions. It took no longer than 30 seconds to add the question below and use the embed code to add it to this post. You can also add the results bar if you want as well. It’s possible to create a range of different questions e.g. Yes/No, a question based on an image, text answers added by you as well as ranking answers (1-5, stars, Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree etc). One of the real strengths behind Ask500.com is the possibility to check statistics based on location, gender, age, income, education and country.

What do you think? Vote now.

Ask500.com is a truly effective and innovative tool which is very useful at both departmental level to use for Student Voice purposes but also at teacher level where you could get students thinking of a good question about the topic or unit that they are studying to really get them involved more deeply in the subject matter and make them see that learning, attitudes, opinions and interests about issues will never cease. You can also add a brief description or fact box to give voters an idea about the topic before the vote by adding a comment to your own post. By adding a comment you can also include hyperlinks to an external website which could provide more in-depth information.

The Art of Arguing

aMap is short for ‘Argument Map’ and the idea behind the website is very straight forward: to encourage the art of arguing by producing complex debates in a sophisticated visual format. aMap is based around the theory of ‘informal logic’ – the structure of arguing by ordinary people in everyday life. Chris Quigley, who led the team that set up this website has written a brilliant post about the theory behind aMap which is worth reading: How to win arguments and influence people. In a nutshell, the structure of ‘informal logic’ looks like this :

1. Your position: what your think overall
2. Propositions: reasons that support your position
3. Argument: supporting arguments that back up each of the propositions
4. Evidence: supporting evidence to back up your arguments

This process is of course ideal for classroom use as it helps students develop their Thinking Skills, reasoning and critical thinking in a highly visual format – great for demonstrating understanding. aMap is also a particularly useful tool for exam groups such as GCSE, A-Level and graduates students as it provides them with a map of ideas to use in their own writing. It is also beneficial for teachers for use in the classroom as you can easily print your maps and it provides a good writing frame to structure an argument for essays or extended pieces of writing as well as class debates.

Here’s an example from the website:

I simply love this tool. I think it’s even better than Bubbl.us…don’t take me off your delicious bookmarks just yet (!)… MindMeister offers something a little different which Bubble.us, at least for the time being (see their blog for updates about the new version), does not.

These are the features I particularly love:

1. Work on your mind-maps off-line: with Google Gears off-line library, you can work on all your maps wherever you are. Although Bubbl.us maps can be added to even if off-line (as the main flash files have already loaded) you cannot save the work without going on-line again.

2. Add ideas to your maps on-the-fly: Insert ideas into your default mind map on MindMeister directly from your Mac Dashboard or Windows Sidebar.

3. Easy images into mind-map: Insert images from the default library, have MindMeister insert an image based on the key word of a node or just upload your own photos or illustrations – fantastic!

And many other tools…

Here is one mind-map that I made for a job interview in July (got the job too!): Tom’s Learning Journey. Just click the image on the left to see a larger version. There are many possibilities with this online tool; I have only used the basics!

The only catch, if you want to use the free version, is that you can only store 6 maps. Mind you, you can export your brilliant creations in various formats incl. .pdf or as an image so you could always get rid of a mind-map and keep creating new ones. It is very cheap to upgrade to an educational license (approx 9 pounds per year) though, take a look on the main site.

Creating diagrams to use in the classroom or online is becoming more and more popular and they range from excellent to, well let’s face it, rather poor. Exploratree has been developed by FutureLabs which is a leading light in transforming the way technology is used in classrooms, and therefore belongs to the former type of tools – excellent.

By registering you can save and hare your diagrams so I suggest you do that first. The website provides you with a series of interactive thinking guides which are categorised into:

• Map your ideas
• Solve problems
• Explore
• Analyze
• Different perspectives

Whereas other tools only allow you to add text and then simply save and print off, ExploraTree gives you the opportunity to add more shapes, text boxes, arrows and even images to your diagrams in a matter of clicks.

This is one of the most sophisticated yet easy online diagram tools I have ever come across and certainly worth exploring further. One particular diagram which I use regularly with my students is an interactive version of Belle Wallace’s Thinking Actively in a Social Context wheel (TASC) as it provides structure to problem solving as well as independent learning projects.

Online comic book generators such as ToonDoo.com and Pixton.com can provide teachers with an opportunity to really engage students, challenge them whilst at the same time ensure that they progress. These type of websites also allows exam groups to think about audience, purpose, context and argument.

ToonDoo.com This particular website allows the user to quickly register and then produce high-quality and varied comics in only a few minutes. Although there are very few differences between Pixton.com and ToonDoo.com, the latter offers more in terms of usability, graphics and sleekness. I have used both sites with both GCSE and A-Level groups with great results.

See the following links for examples how I have used them:

French Revolution: What should they do with Louis XVI?

Look at these two comics I made at Pixton.com:

• Open Mic Battle: Witte v Stolypin at Pixton.com
• Why did the Uprising of 1953 happen? at Pixton.com

VisuWords and Wordle.net (below) are not what I would regard essential WEB 2.0 tools for classroom when you first look at them. However, I feel that both tools can have some benefit for both students as well as teachers.

VisuWords allows you to look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. You can then produce a diagram of those associations as well as, if you’re geeky, install the software on your own site! The image on the left shows you the associations from the word ‘freedom’. This website is useful to explore big concepts and get students thinking carefully about how words relate.

This interesting website was passed onto me from Tom S. It’s essentially a ‘collage’ tool, excellent for presenting ideas and visualising concepts. Neal Watkin recently asked on Twitter if Wordle inspired design firms with their graphics or if design firms inspired Wordle.net… Here are a few examples:

Hopefully you found some of these WEB 2.0 tools to be a useful and interesting addition to your teaching repertoire? If you have come across other tools that you have used successfully with your students then please share your experience and explain how you used it in the classroom : ) .

Johannes.