UPDATED: Educational Uses of Web 2.0 Based Applications

Gordon Snyder and I led a half-day workshop Tuesday July 29th on the educational uses of Web 2.0. Here are the links we referenced in that presentation, with some updated information. We may turn this into a wiki and allow people to post tools they've found and used and comment on the list of tools. We may also record this as a podcast. Let us know what you think and what you'd like to see.

Our contact information:

Mike Qaissaunee mqaissaunee@brookdalecc.edu
Gordon Snyder gsnyder@stcc.edu

Our Podcast

Gordon and Mike's Podcast

Our blogs

Gordon's blog
Mike's blog

Cell Phones

blog post on cell phones
Poll Everywhere
Grandcentral
Jott
Qik / Kyte.tv / jusitn.tv / Flixwagon / Mogulus /  
Just added - UStream.TV
Just added - Twitterfone

Webware

Office 2.0 Database
Google Docs
Zoho
Just added - Zimbra
Gliffy
Slideshare
280 Slides
Sliderocket
Just added - Flowgram - I have beta invites if needed

Just added - Online Mindmapping

blog posts on mindmapping
Wikipedia entry on Mind Maps
A Beginner's Guide to Mind Mapping Meetings
Mindmeister
Mindomo
Comapping
WiseMapping

Video

Viral Video - Mentos
Viral Video - An Engineer's Guide to Cats - wish I had thought of this
Jing
Video - David Riser
Bob Dylan Mashup
NCTT Videos
Seesmic
Qik / Kyte.tv / jusitn.tv / Flixwagon / Mogulus /  
Just added - UStream.TV

Information Gathering

iGoogle
Google Reader

Just added - Online Meeting-Screen/Application Sharing

DimDim
Yugma
Vyew
Zoho Meeting
Elluminate - free VRoom for up to 3 participants
Screen Stream
TeamViewer
Adobe ConnectNow - free for up to 3 participants

Micro-blogging

Twitter / Powne / Jaiku / Just added - Plurk

Social Networks

Facebook / MySpace / LinkedIn

Ultra Aggregators

Friendfeed

Bookmarks

del.icio.us
Gordon's del.icio.us
Mike's del.icio.us
ma.gnolia
Google bookmarks

Just added - Game Builders - not really Web 2.0, but worth looking at if you're interested in educational applications of gaming.

PlayCrafter
Game Maker

Related articles by Zemanta

• Educational Uses of Web 2.0 Based Applications
• Boost Your Brainstorming Session with MindMeister [Mind Maps]
• Making Sense Of New Technologies And Media: An Opinionated Digest by George Siemens - July 5 08
• Mead Goes Green, with Mind Mapping. 1000 Invites for Mashable.
• Offmeister - MindMeister Goes Offline
• The love of work: Office 2.0
• WiseMapping: More Ajax Mind Mapping
• FriendFeed crawls Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube so you don't have to.
• Why Kyte.tv will kill Qik and Flixwagon in cell phone video space
• Web 3.0: Here We Go Again
• Twitter's Business Model? Well, Ummmm...
• Hello Google Reader, hello BeTwittered
• Blogging As a Method of Communication May Be Over!
• Social Media U: Take a Class in Social Media

Innovative Solutions to our Environmental Woes

Image via Wikipedia

Interesting story from Scientific American that describes a process, developed by a company called Calera, for taking most of the carbon dioxide (CO2) generated from a 1,000 Megawatt power plant and using it to make concrete. This idea of sequestering pollutants is not new, but this process puts a new spin on the idea by creating a useful product. This sort of approach could have considerable impact, when you consider that China and the US together use nearly 1,000 metric tons of Portland cement per year - potentially netting 500 metric tons of captured CO2.

Cement from CO2: A Concrete Cure for Global Warming?

"For every ton of cement we make, we are sequestering half a ton of CO2," says crystallographer Brent Constantz, founder of Calera. "We probably have the best carbon capture and storage technique there is by a long shot."

Carbon capture and storage has been identified by experts ranging from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the leaders of the world's eight richest nations (G8) as crucial to the fight against climate change. The idea is to capture the CO2 and other greenhouse gases produced when burning fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas, and then permanently store it, such as in deep-sea basalt formations.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Out of Sight, Out of Clime: Burying Carbon In a Vault of Sea and Rock [News]
• How Denmark Sees the World in 2012
• Clean energy: Do we need an Apollo project for energy?

Micro-Blogging in the Enterprise

Micro-blogging is a relatively new form of social networking that involves building a community of "friends" - people you follow and people who follow you - followers. Users in the community post "updates" describing what they're doing, links to interesting an website, photos, philosophical musings, etc. An interesting application of these tools is asking the community a question - a version of James Surowiecki's Wisdom of the Crowds approach. Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, and Pownce are among micro-blogging applications available. Twitter by far seems to have grabbed the largest user base and is the leader of the pack - although server issues and downtime periodally frustrate users. While many of us may not "get" Twitter and it's 140 character updates, micro-blogging seems to be making it's way into the enterprise. Here's a brief video describing just such an enterprise tool.




video via Thomas Vander Wal via http://youtube.com/user/uhsij

Related articles by Zemanta

• Save me from the Twitter clones
• Hands on: Rejaw melds microblogging with instant chat
• Rejaw is Not Just Another Twitter Clone
• Giving Twitter a Break: A Look at the Alternatives to Twitter
• Twitter is Not a Micro-Blogging Tool
• Best Web LittleCo of 2007: Twitter
• Are Your Friends in Your Suitcase?

How the Mightly Fall

Image via Wikipedia

I was never an AOL user or subscriber, but was aware of their size and reach in the early days of the Internet. Unfortunately - at least for AOL - with the explosion in high speed data access, and the proliferation of search and content (news, video, blogs and more), AOL hasn't been able to keep pace. Probably their only remaining strong property is AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and its' large user-base.

Slow March to AOL's Funeral Continues: Split in Two - ReadWriteWeb

According to a statement by Time Warner, AOL will be split into two separate businesses: advertising and access. Overall, revenues from its AOL division declined 16% to $1.1 billion last year. Most importantly, subscription revenue from its dial-up services dropped by 29%, especially after AOL started to offer more of its products for free. The only bright spot for AOL was that its advertising sales grew by 2%. Even there, though, the decline in users on sites in the AOL network put a dent into the otherwise relatively positive results.

Related articles by Zemanta

• AOL to Shut Down Xdrive and Other Services

Using Technology to Fight Crimes

I gave a presentation last week that included ways that educators could leverage the presence of cell phones in the classroom - integrate them into the educational process - rather than simply banning them or having students turn them off. Here's a link to a blog post I used to lead the presentation - where you can find links to relevant resources, under the Cell Phones heading.
From today's New York Times, here's another great example of using the technology to improve how an organization operates - it comes from the NYC Police Department. As you would expect, one of the biggest challenges any police department faces is getting citizens to report crimes. Capitalizing on the growing number of young people that use cell phones primarily for texting - rarely making calls - the NYCPD has put in place, and begun publicizing a system to allow anonymous texting of crime reports. Users can even initiate a text conversation with detectives from the CrimeStoppers bureau. It will be interesting to see what impact this new initiative has on crime.

The gap between this group of young people - digital natives - and "older" people like myself - digital immigrants - is further highlighted by the phrase "callers must text the word" in the passage below. If they're texting, they're not callers!

Now for the million dollar question! How are you and your institution leveraging the power of cell phones to reach and engage this generation?

Police Urge Crimefighters to Text Their Tips - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog

For years, mayors, police commissioners, community leaders and others have sought to drill into the heads of New Yorkers a simple toll-free phone number do dial to anonymously help in solving crimes: 1-800-577-TIPS.

Now, they want to enlist a younger generation of crime-busters. On Tuesday, the Police Department publicized directions for citizens on how to send text messages to the authorities, to provide the same sort of anonymous tips for investigators working on unsolved criminal cases.

The directions are simple, according to Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman. To initiate a conversation with detectives in the CrimeStoppers bureau, callers must text the word CRIMES (or 274637 on a cellular phone).

Then, to initiate an exchange of messages, and to ensure that identities are protected, a caller must begin the message with the phrase TIP577. The caller will get a response from the police assigning an alias or a code name, which will probably be a combination of letters and numbers.

“You can text back and forth and stop it any time,” Mr. Browne said.

To stop it, a caller simply types the word STOP in the message field and send it as a text message, “and no more police responses will appear on the cellphone,” Mr. Browne said.

Image from Alton via Wikipedia

Toyota's Personal Transporter

Image via Wikipedia

Toyota Announces Segway Killer: The Winglet Personal Transporter

Only a year after taking control of Sony's robotics business, Toyota has come up with a vertical, mechanized scooter (or personal transporter, in future-speak) intended to help people move about in public areas.

Called the Winglet because of its fleet nature, it is the first gadget to duplicate the celebrated, and often mocked, navigation system of Dean Kamen's Segway Transporter: self-balancing through gyroscopic sensors detecting the gentle directional tilts of a rider.

However, this personal scooter is probably not up to par to the Segway in speed or ruggedness. The newest Segway model can go up to 12.5 miles per hour (versus the Winglet's 3.7 MPH)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Stand & Scoot: Toyota Challenges Segway
• Toyota Winglet Sport Feels Like Inline Skates for Klutzs Like Me [Sports Winglet]
• Toyota's Winglet aims to usurp Segway, why we don't know
• Toyota reveals 'Winglet' assistance robots, Segways beware [w/VIDEO]
• Luke Arm Update
• Can Toyota's Winglet become a Segway killer?

Technology Leadership

Found this via John Gruber at Daring Fireball. It is so funny and well-written, I couldn't resist posting it. McCain Makes Historic First Visit to Internet - Borowitz Report

Will Spend Five Days at Key Sites

In a daring bid to wrench attention from his Democratic rival in the 2008 presidential race, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) today embarked on an historic first-ever visit to the Internet.

Given that the Arizona Republican had never logged onto the Internet before, advisors acknowledged that his first visit to the World Wide Web was fraught with risk.

But with his Democratic rival Barack Obama making headlines with his tour of the Middle East and Europe, the McCain campaign felt that they needed to "come up with something equally bold for John to do," according to one advisor.

McCain aides said that the senator's journey to the Internet will span five days and will take him to such far-flung sites as Amazon.com, eBay and Facebook.