20 useful web 2.0 teaching tools

So it’s the start of a new school year and many of you will be searching for new ideas and approaches to try and engage your class. With this in mind I thought I’d put together a list (everyone loves lists right) of some of the most useful web 2.0 teaching tools for primary school teachers. Obviously sites like facebook, twitter, stumbleupon, delicious, flickr, google earth, wikipedia et al can be of use to educators, but I’m going to try and focus on sites that you might not be aware of. So here goes, in no particular order:

1) Story Jumper

Story jumper is a place to discover and create stories for kids. You can easily create cover pages, add text, upload drawings or photos to illustrate your story, and you can use the StoryJumper clipart gallery, too.

2) Story bird

Another site that’s great for building stories. Storybirds. Storybirds are short, art-inspired stories you make to share, read, and print. You can read them like books, play them like games, and send them like greeting cards.

3) Go Animate

GoAnimate features sophisticated but user friendly animation tools  that are perfect to complement teaching and get students to put learning into practice in an exciting and engaging way.

4) Time toast

Time toast can be used to create attractive and informative timelines that you can publish on the internet, share with friends or print.

5) Aviary

Aviary is a suite of powerful creative applications that you can use right in your web browser. A very simple and free way to build, edit and share work. The suite includes loads of helpful tools that will assist with graphic design, audio editing and remixing. A fantastic website taht opens up a whole range of options for teachers.

6) Popplet

Popplet is a web-based mind mapping application that enables users to collect documents, pictures, videos, and text, in a nice organised and visually coherent way. I suppose it’s like an online pin-board.

7) Glogster

Glogster is a social network that can be used to design free interactive posters known as glogs. A glog is an interactive multimedia image (a graphical blog)…a poster with interactive capabilities.

8 ) Edmodo

Edmodo is a social learning tool designed specifically to enable teachers and students to share Notes, Files, links, and assignments.

9) Prezi

Prezi is an innovative online presentation and storytelling application. Instead of using slides it uses a signle infinite canvas. All text, images, videos etc are placed on the canvas and grouped together in frames. It’s also a very handy way of sharing presentations without using powerpoint.

10) Animoto

A very user- friendly tool that can be used to turn video clips, images and music in to visually compelling videos.

11) Blabberize

Blabberize is a tool that lets you upload an image and make it talk. You simply select the mouth and then assign the audio and before you know it your image is yapping away. I’m sure it could be used in all sorts of educational activities. It’s worth checking out for the introductory video alone…it’s a little bit funny.

12) Audioboo

Audioboo is a website, iPhone and Android app that enables users to easily record and share sound files.

13) Wordle

Wordle is an online application that enables users to generate “word clouds” from text they input. Word clouds can be customised with different fonts, layouts, and colour schemes. They can be printed out or saved to the Wordle gallery.

14) Wikis

Wikispaces is a hosting service that lets users share text, images, audio, video and more in a safe and secure way. It’s fantastic for collaborative projects as students can login and edit together.

15) WordPress

WordPress is a simple, user friendly, open source blog tool and content publishing platform.

16) Primarypad

PrimaryPad is a web-based word processor designed for schools that allows pupils and teachers to work together in real-time.

17) Doink

Do ink is a user friendly online application that enables users to create flash style animations which can be uploaded to youtube and facebook. Users can use the community artwork or upload their own.

18) Scratch

Scratch is an online tool that makes it easy to create and share animations, interactive stories, games, music, and art. It was developed with the intention of helping young people to learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.

19) Kerpoof

Kerpoof is similar to Scratch in that it features animated software which help users to create animated movie, design artwork and build stories. The site has a useful page for educators providing ideas and lesson plans for a variety of disciplines, from math and science to social studies and foreign languages.

20) Studyladder

Studyladder is a user-friendly, Mathematics and Literacy program designed for primary school children . It has been developed by experienced educators to inspire and motivate learning and is used by over a million pupils worldwide.