WEB 2.0 EDUCATIONAL LEARNING TOOLS


A book to help you understand 21st century teaching resources!

By: Neesha (EDU 210 Project) 


  • Skype

    3
  • Edmodo

    4
  • iSpeech

    5


Tool Number 1: Skype

You can link to skype by visiting: http://www.skype.com/en/ 

The first web tool that we are going to talk about is Skype. Skype is an extremely popular educational and social tool that allows for video, audial, and textual communication between people all over the world (Skype, 2016). This tool allows for multi-person communication, such as multiple-caller phone conversations, group text conversations, and very popularly: group video-conferencing with people all over the world. Best of all, unless you enable any of the add-ons, this is a free calling mechanism! This tool is designed  to improve communication amongst people internationally, for either school, social, professional, and/or work purposes (Skype, 2016). 

Due to this tool enabling communication between people across the world, it helps with establishing world-wide connections amongst people (Skype, 2016). For instance, in a social studies 10 class, it would be easy to connect with another social studies 10 class from across the world to see multiple perspectives on a topic. This program will help bridge the gap, while also promoting cultural awareness within the classrooms! 

As a teacher, I would definitely use Skype to do video conferencing in both my classroom and for my own professional development. For my classroom, I would try to do webinars between my class and another class from somewhere else in the world. For example, if I was teaching an English class and we were analyzing a Shakespeare play, maybe I would connect with a class in Britain who is working on the same play, to get more diverse perceptions on the interpretation of the Shakespeare play. For my professional development, I would use Skype to connect with other educators around the world. 

I would not recommend having my students create their own Skype account; we would collectively do webinars using my teachers account, especially with kids under 13 (the age that students should be at or above to use Skype (Skype, 2016)). This would be used for activities being done by the whole class. 

Information referenced from: www.skype.com  



Tool Number 2: Edmodo

You can link to Edmodo by visiting the following link: https://www.edmodo.com 

Edmodo is a fantastic tool that can be used for many different purposes. This program is strictly educational, meaning that it can only be used between teachers (including student-teachers), students and parents (Edmodo, 2016). It acts as an information hub between these three involved parties to communicate homework, in-class assignments, school news, discussions, and even messaging between the different parties (Edmodo, 2016). Within the program, both teachers and students can communicate with other students and teachers who are using Edmodo. People sometimes look at it as the Facebook of the educational world (Edmodo, 2016). 

This helps keep up communication and organization between the school (teachers) and the parents + students. Everything is kept in this one domain rather than multiple different digital platforms. 

As a teacher, I would use this tool for classroom organization and education. Within the program, you are able to create your own classrooms and restrictions that allow only certain people to view your communications between people. I would use this to maintain good communciation between my students and their parents as well. 

This tools is very similar to Schoolzone, so I would ensure that all of my students have an account and are able to communicated effectively as well. 

Information referenced from: www.edmodo.com 



Tool Number 3: iSpeech

You can visit iSpeech by visiting the following link: https://www.ispeech.org/

iSpeech is an online tool that translates web text into speech (iSpeech, 2016). This is an excellent way for students who are unable to read text, either due to preference or due to visual impairments, an alternative to still obtain the information they need. 

This tool serves many purposes. It can read web text, text messages and text from word documents that are found on your computer or internet-enabled device (iSpeech, 2016). It can help you when you with tasks from just needing to have directions read out-loud to you in your car, to you being blind and it reads the information out loud for you to obtain the information! It helps a variety of people! 

In the classroom, iSpeech would be very helpful for those students who have visual impairments. It serves as another system for students to obtain information from that serves their own personal needs. 

This tool however would be slightly cautioned outside of classrooms because there is an associated cost to downloading the software (iSpeech, 2016). 

Information referenced from: iSpeech.org 


 

That is it for now folks! Thanks for reading!