March 2008 — News

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A Taste of Web 2.0

by Patricia Deubel, Ph.D.

Quiz-School, a free online quiz service from ProProfs.com. Create and customize your quiz, share it with others, post the quiz on any Web page, including at your classroom Web site, or link to it from any Web page.  You can create printable versions, too, add discussion on the quiz, set criteria for passing, and provide feedback on what the correct answer should have been. Assign keywords to your quiz for easy retrieval. The site also has a section for creating flashcards for free.

New online tools make conducting research on the Web, be it serious or just for personal knowledge, a lot easier and more productive. Answers.com is a free and safe "one-stop guide to the initial research process." Comprehensive, authoritative facts are available on each of 4 million topics from leading publishers, with Wikipedia also a source. Diigo, the "Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff," is all about social annotation. It's also free and features "social bookmarking, clippings, in situ annotation, tagging [i.e., keywords for searching], full-text search, easy sharing and interactions." Users can add highlights and sticky notes on any Web page and designate private notes or public comments. i-Lighter also features a tool for highlighting online text in yellow and adding your notes just as you would on paper or with post-it notes. The free software is downloaded to your desktop and an icon displays on your browser toolbar for when you want to use the highlighter. Folders contain your highlighted information, notes, and links back to source pages. You can choose to make your highlights private or public. Content can also be e-mailed to others or posted to a blog.

In the Classroom
Some Web applications can be used in specific subject areas. Certainly Google Earth can be a powerful tool for studies in social studies, geography, and science. You can search for just about anything, zoom in, then tilt and rotate to see the terrain and buildings, and search the sky. Google Maps is more than a source for directions to places of interest. You can create personalized, annotated maps, and see actual street views in select cities. Best of all, you can save your searches and share those with others.

Newsvine.com is a great find for current events in multiple fields. Yes, it's a source for local, national, and world news from services like ESPN and Associated Press. But, the developers of the site wanted to promote a different way to read, write, and interact with the news. By putting users in control, news adjusts according to what users find important. Best of all, students can set up a column and write articles for friends and the world to discuss. Newsvine's Code of Honor helps control its content.