Web 2.0 Tools
Photo Peach is a place where you can create slideshows, share slideshows and you can embed them into a blog or website to be shared worldwide. It is free to sign up. You can create an account or you can choose to sign up through facebook.
The neat feature is the PhotoPeach for Educators. Here you can create multiple student accounts. Students cannot delete or alter your account but they have access to see what is on there and much more. There is a charge for this one but it is reasonable. It depends on how many students you would like to add. If there is one educator and 50 students then the charge is 9$ a month and so on.
I think this would work really well for study notes. Students could each choose a topic or be given a topic and create a slide show then share it with the rest of the class. The teacher would also have access to it and can make sure everything is correct and since you can share it it can also be used as an in class study tool using an interactive whiteboard.
This tool allows students to be creative and it allows students to see other students work as well. If you were to use it as a study tool then students who struggle in a class could write the study notes on what they know and could benefit from the other class notes they maybe do not know as much.
This tool could be used for any grade really. I would think it would be more beneficial from grade 6 and up but no where does it have an age restriction.
This is an app where you can have free conference calls, voicemails and podcasting.
I would mainly use this for the podcasting especially as a french major. It is important to hear your students talk and at the lower level this is a great replacement for presentations infront of the class. You could also use it for conference calling if you were to have a school you could call with and the students could have french conversations with other french students at the same level.
I find a lot of students in second language classes get really nervous to speak infront of the class in the second language and the podcasting is a great way for them to avoid that. This allows students to focus on themselves and they know that only I will hear the podcast unless they choose to share it with the class which some students may do.
Edmodo is an online collaboration tool that can be shared between teachers, students and parents. You can share assignments, quizzes, news etc.
This would be awesome for a classroom from grade 6-12. You can put all your assignments online or just general homework or general information about expectations in the classroom. This way even the parents are aware of what is expected of their children.
This would be great for students who have trouble woth keeping up with their homework especially if their parents are on top of things and see that they have homework to do. It can also be great for students who go on holidays because then they are still able to see what they have missed in class and what they are expected to have done when they return. It put some accountability on the students.