WEB 2.

0 IN THE CLASSROOM:
COLLABORATIVE TOOLS FOR LEARNING
SCIENCE

Presented at the MSTA Annual Conference, 2010

This single page handout provides information about this session, notes, and links to in-depth resources
available online. If you have questions, please contact me by email at sdbest@umich.edu.
(Just mention MSTA in the subject line, so that my spam filter doesn’t kill your message.)

Overview of this Session:

This session will explore a variety of “Web 2.0” tools that can be used by students and teachers to support
science learning and instruction. We’ll see lots of examples of these tools in action, and see just what the
potential (or, at least, considerations for use) of these sites might be as a way to help students better learn
about science.

Just what is “Web 2.0”? It’s essentially the second generation of web sites of the Internet, which use different
programming code than the original sites of 10+ years ago, so that there is greater interaction with the
content, and with other people who use these sites. The focus of these tools is more on collaboration and
sharing, rather than just getting content (or treating the Internet as one, really big, encyclopedia, as is still
done by many).

There are a lot of interesting and fun web sites out there, and a lot that are commonly used by our students
(i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.). But, this session isn’t about how to use tools that weren’t intended for content
learning (or where there is too much of a stretch to accomplish such learning with the tool). Rather, it is about
looking at the kinds of things we know our students need to do to learn, and finding tools that work with these
approaches. The following page provides a number of links to tools you will see in the presentation, and you
can check out more at the site mentioned below.

About the Presenter and Resources:

Stephen Best works at the University of Michigan School of Education, and specializes in issues of professional
learning for teachers, focusing primarily on science education, technology integration, and mathematics
education. He is a project director for several statewide initiatives, including “Investigate the State” and the
Michigan Mathematics and Science Teacher Leadership Collaborative (MMSTLC), where these materials were
first developed to help support teacher leaders and other science educators. Contact me at sdbest@umich.edu

More detailed resources from this presentation, including links to the online presentation, audio notes, and a
handout packet can be found in the “Resources” section (under “science resources”) of the MMSTLC website:

http://mmstlc.net

MSTA 2010 - Lansing, MI Presented by Stephen Best, University of Michigan

The Practices of Learning Science
Before you explore specific tools, I think it is best to think about what you WANT students to do to help them
learn in your classroom, and then find a tool to do that. The sites listed below are just a sample of the
available tools that can address the different practices of learning (the categories listed below). For more
information, I would recommend looking... where else... on the Web. Google is a great place to start...

Document / Note Creation: Data Collection and Analysis:

Google Docs (docs.google.com) - collaborative
web-based word processor (and other tools)
Zoho Docs (www.zoho.com) - similar to Google
Docs... just not Google
Wikis (Wikispaces, PB Wiki, etc.) - one of the
original web-based collaboration tools for text
and other documents. Allows embedding of other
types of media (pictures, videos, etc.) to create
web pages. Free accounts for teachers.
Evernote (www.evernote.com) - a personal
favorite, which allows for text, pictures, web-
clipping, and even voice notes, and organizes
them using tags
Brainstorming / Concept Mapping:
Spinscape (www.spinscape.com) - think of
“Inspiration”, but online, and with the ability to
have others work on your concept map.
Mindmeister (www.mindmeister.com) - similar, but
a little cleaner looking, but you can’t add files.
Drawing and Diagramming:
Notetaking sites like Evernote use some of this
functionality.
BambooSpace (www.bamboospace.eu) - a
freeform drawing tool
Creately (www.creately.com) - pretty
sophisticated collaborative drawing tool for
flowcharts, maps, forms, etc.
Google Docs - what doesn’t it do? Not only does it have
a collaborative spreadsheet tool, but you can also
create forms to instantly enter data into the
spreadsheet.
Site specific data - check many sites that gather data
(weather sites, EPA, USGS, etc.) to see some of the
custom tools that are developed for manipulating this
data for ease in analysis.
Research and Reading Text:
Scribd (www.scribd.com) - their iPaper tools are quite
nice, and they are trying to become for documents what
YouTube is for video.
Google Books or Scholar - what can I say - it’s Google.
Soon, they’ll own the world, or at least, all the
information in the world.
Wolfram Alpha - Does science and math almost too well
- an amazing tool that may scare traditional teachers.
Viewing Images and Video:
Flickr (www.flickr.com) - king of the photosharing sites,
though there are a number of copycats. Great for
finding images. For video, YouTube or TeacherTube.
Presentations:
Slideshare (www.slideshare.com) - great for posting
Powerpoint style slides
Prezi (www.prezi.com) - great for creating non-linear
presentations

Where Can I Learn More:

Go2Web20 - (www.go2web20.net) - This is a first stop for learning about any web 2.0 types of tools, as it is
essentially the “yellow pages” of these tools. It catalogs the tools, gives links to them, and summaries of what
they do. Go there if you are just curious about what tools are out there.
Search Google or YouTube - Probably one of the best ways to just see what is out there is to do a Google
search. But, if you want to know what is good for classroom use, be sure to include the term “education” or
“learning” in your search. Also, odd as it sounds, Youtube is a great place to search for information about this,
because instead of getting just results as links, you will often get “how-to” videos to help you really SEE what
the sites can do for you.
CommonCraft (www.commoncraft.com) - I really can’t say enough about their video explanations of the various
tools and resources on the web. The “in Plain English” tools are great if you are new to online tools.
WebTools4Learning (webtools4learning.org) - This is a shameless plug of a site I am trying to create to give
educators some ideas about different web tools that you can use with students.

MSTA 2010 - Lansing, MI Presented by Stephen Best, University of Michigan