Communication

**//Communication tools for Student and parent sharing

http://www.wikispaces.com///**

**Online tools for posting and sharing student writing and publications**

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http://unomaha.wikispaces.com/Text+Tools

**Text Web 2.0 Tools**
[|Delicious] || media type="youtube" key="eRqUE6IHTEA&rel=1" height="295" width="354" [|Zoho] [|Google Docs] ||
 * How Does Online Collaboration Work? ||  ||
 * ===**Social Bookmarking:**=== || ===**Document Collaboration and Sharing:**=== ||
 * What is Social Bookmarking? || Google Docs in Plain English ||
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 * ===**Blogs:**=== || ===**Wikis:**=== ||
 * How to Start a Blog || What is a Wiki? ||
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There are many advantages to using these free and very powerful online tools. First and foremost, they make work productive, easy, and enjoyable for your students. Second, you and others can easily find and review their work. They offer ways for public review and students experience authenticity and ownership in their writing or for privacy and annonymity if that is your preference. When you write for an audience, it suddenly becomes much more interesting and important. Another possibility is that they may just give your students the nudge to START writing. Sometimes this is the hardest part. But if you tell them they need to have something posted to their blog by a certain date, and they know that others will be reading it, well. . . that might be all it takes. Then, once they are started, writing becomes a bit easier.

**Google Sites**
My first thought was that I could post student work on my google site. http://www.google.com/sites/overview.html Google Sites is an online application that makes creating a team web site as easy as editing a document. With Google Sites, people can quickly gather a variety of information in one place -- including videos, calendars, presentations, attachments, and text -- and easily share it for viewing or editing with a small group, their entire organization, or the world. http://sites.google.com/ If you want simple, static web pages, then Google pages is available, free, and easy to use.

Quick facts

Single-click page creation Creating a new page for your Google Site just takes the click of a button.

No HTML required Creating a Google Site is as easy as editing a document, which means there's no markup language for you to learn -- just get started.

Make it your own Our customization options let you give your Google Site your own look and feel

Get started with templates We offer a growing list of page types -- web page, announcements, file cabinet, dashboard and list -- to help you get started with your Google Sites pages.

Upload files and attachments Use the file cabinet to upload files up to 10MB in size. Each Google Apps account receives at least 10GB of storage in Google Sites. Google Apps Premier and Education editions get an additional 500MB for each user account.

Embed rich content Google Sites is integrated with other Google products, so you can insert videos, docs, spreadsheets, presentations, photo slide shows, and calendars directly onto your Google Sites pages.

Work together and share Our permission settings let you designate owners, viewers and collaborators (meaning they can edit pages) for your site. And you can make your Google Sites available to just a few people, your entire organization, or the world.

Search with Google You can search across Google Sites pages and content using powerful Google search technology. You'll find specific pages and documents instantly, the same way you would on Google.com.

**Wikis**
For a more interactive, dynamic look, feel, and experience, wikis are perfect. I like wikispaces a little better, but wetpaint is another great free wiki service that is worth exploring. Wikispaces lets you create simple web pages that groups, friends, and families can edit together. You can add people to your wiki to edit and make comments. Most wikis have discussion tabs too, where your students can discuss aspects of your lessons or share information. http://www.wikispaces.com/ http://www.wetpaint.com/

K-12 Help for Wikis from Wikispaces http://www.wikispaces.com/help+Teachers

**Wiki Examples**
What will happen to Sylvia? Can you help us to write our story? Choose where you would like to go in the story. Add new pages and new links to make the story really interactive! To add to any of the pages, click on the Edit This Page tab at the top, add your part and click on Save at the bottom. Click on Story start in the menu to get going! http://kingston.wikispaces.com/

http://thewright3.wikispaces.com/ http://educationalwikis.wikispaces.com/ http://blog.wikispaces.com/2008/09/100000-free-k12-wikis-and-250000-more.html http://ksuanth.wetpaint.com/ http://csi.wetpaint.com/page/Write+a+CSI+Episode+Together%21 http://mrcarroll.wetpaint.com/page/About+Me http://mrcarroll.wetpaint.com/page/Writing http://plwp.wetpaint.com/ http://wiki.classroom20.com/live+conversations http://blackhistorymonth.wikispaces.com/ http://wiki.classroom20.com/English http://wiki.classroom20.com/expanded_writing

**Google Docs**
Online applications such as google docs and zoho writer are also options. Students can write their papers in these online applications, access them from any computer, add others to their document for comments and revisions and then even publish this paper online. As they continue to revise their paper, their published version is updated, too.

http://www.google.com/educators/p_docs.html http://www.google.com/educators/tools.html http://www.google.com/educators/index.html http://docs.google.com/

**Blogging Tools and examples:**
Blogs are very easy to create and edit. Lots of free blogging services are available. Right now I am a WordPress fan, but blogger.com has been a favorite for years too. You can create individual or group blogs. Blogs by their nature are more private then wikis. Blogs also offer the ability to make comments if you have that option turned on, but other net readers cannot edit your web pages, like a wiki. Wikis are wide open social spaces while blogs are one person or one groups to edit. The neat thing about a blog is that is can be used for students to write their paper, get comments/feedback from other students and faculty and use this as their rough draft process.

http://obryantmiddleschool.blogspot.com/2008/07/students-entering-7th-grade-summer.html

http://highlands6-8.blogspot.com/

http://www.butlerville.net/1b/

http://itc.blogs.com/rikard/

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time. http://wordpress.com/signup/ Blogs are great because they effectively integrate all the Web 2.0 applications listed below through embedding or links.

http://berrienspringsmiddleschool.wordpress.com/

http://21classes.com/

O'Neal Public Schools Blog Spot: http://tinyurl.com/5eah3g

Ned the Lead from Westside Middle School http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=40120&user_id=40120&blog_id=653970&position2=-1

**Teachertube**
TeacherTube is a teacher friendly video publishing site that is not blocked by most districts and where you can post videos of student work, examples you create, ideas for other educators, etc. etc. http://www.teachertube.com/

A student reads his writing media type="custom" key="1987834"

A Stitch in Time with Grandma Personal narrative media type="custom" key="1987824"

5th grade Fairy Tales media type="custom" key="1926800"

**Twitter**
Twitter - Byte-sized stories: Twittering a tiny tale http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080901-byte-sized-stories-twittering-a-tiny-tale.html

Writing a Twiller - New York Times http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/29/introducing-the-twiller/