Web 2.

0 services/applications

There are a number of Web-based services and applications that demonstrate the
foundations of the Web 2.0 concept, and they are already being used to a certain extent in
education. These are not really technologies as such, but services (or user processes) built
using the building blocks of the technologies and open standards that underpin the Internet
and the Web. These include blogs, wikis, multimedia sharing services, content syndication,
podcasting and content tagging services. Many of these applications of Web technology are
relatively mature, having been in use for a number of years, although new features and
capabilities are being added on a regular basis. It is worth noting that many of these newer
technologies are concatenations, i.e. they make use of existing services. In the first part of
this section we introduce and review these well-known and commonly used services with a
view to providing a common grounding for later discussion.

NB * indicates an open source or other, similar, community or public-spirited project.

2.1 Blogs
Well-known or education-based blogs:
The term web-log, or blog, was coined by Jorn Barger http://radar.oreilly.com/
in 1997 and refers to a simple webpage consisting of http://www.techcrunch.com/
http://www.instapundit.com/
brief paragraphs of opinion, information, personal http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/ *
diary entries, or links, called posts, arranged http://jiscdigitisation.typepad.com/jisc_
chronologically with the most recent first, in the style digitisation_program/ *
of an online journal (Doctorow et al., 2002). Most
blogs also allow visitors to add a comment below a Software:
http://wordpress.org/ *
blog entry. http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/
http://www.blogger.com/start
This posting and commenting process contributes to http://radio.userland.com/
the nature of blogging (as an exchange of views) in http://www.bblog.com/
what Yale University law professor, Yochai Benkler,
Blog search services:
calls a ‘weighted conversation’ between a primary
http://technorati.com/
author and a group of secondary comment http://www.gnosh.org/
contributors, who communicate to an unlimited http://blogsearch.google.com/
number of readers. It also contributes to blogging's http://www.weblogs.com/about.html
sense of immediacy, since ‘blogs enable individuals to
write to their Web pages in journalism time – that is
hourly, daily, weekly – whereas the Web page culture that preceded it tended to be slower
moving: less an equivalent of reportage than of the essay’ (Benkler, 2006, p. 217).

Each post is usually ‘tagged’ with a keyword or two, allowing the subject of the post to be
categorised within the system so that when the post becomes old it can be filed into a
standard, theme-based menu system1. Clicking on a post’s description, or tag (which is
displayed below the post), will take you to a list of other posts by the same author on the
blogging software’s system that use the same tag.

1
Blog content is regularly filed so that only the latest content is available from the homepage. This means that
returning to a blog’s homepage after several weeks or months to find a particular piece of content is potentially
a hit and miss affair. The development of the permalink was an attempt to counter this, but has its own inherent
problems.
Linking is also an important aspect of blogging as it deepens the conversational nature of the
blogosphere (see below) and its sense of immediacy. It also helps to facilitate retrieval and
referencing of information on different blogs but some of these are not without inherent
problems:

 The permalink is a permanent URI which is generated by the blogging system and is
applied to a particular post. If the item is moved within the database, e.g. for
archiving, the permalink stays the same. Crucially, if the post is renamed, or if the
content is changed in any way, the permalink will still remain unchanged: i.e. there is
no version control, and using a permalink does not guarantee the content of a post.

 Trackback (or pingback) allows a blogger (A) to notify another blogger (B) that they
have referenced or commented on one of blogger B’s posts. When blog B receives
notification from blog A that a trackback has been created, blog B’s system
automatically creates a record of the permalink of the referring post. Trackback only
works when it is enabled on both the referring and the referred blogs. Some bloggers
deliberately disable trackback as it can be a route in for spammers.

 The blogroll is a list of links to other blogs that a particular blogger likes or finds
useful. It is similar to a blog ‘bookmark’ or ‘favourites’ list.

Blog software also facilitates syndication, in which information about the blog entries, for
example, the headline, is made available to other software via RSS and, increasingly, Atom.
This content is then aggregated into feeds, and a variety of blog aggregators and specialist
blog reading tools can make use of these feeds (see Table 1 for some key examples).

The large number of people engaged in blogging has given rise to its own term –
blogosphere – to express the sense of a whole ‘world’ of bloggers operating in their own
environment. As technology has become more sophisticated, bloggers have begun to
incorporate multimedia into their blogs and there are now photo-blogs, video blogs (vlogs),
and, increasingly, bloggers can upload material directly from their mobile phones (mob-
blogging). For more on the reasons why people blog, the style and manner of their blogging
and the subject areas that are covered, see Nardi et al., 2004.

2.2 Wikis

A wiki2 is a webpage or set of webpages that can

be easily edited by anyone who is allowed access
(Ebersbach et al., 2006). Wikipedia’s popular
success has meant that the concept of the wiki, as
a collaborative tool that facilitates the production
of a group work, is widely understood. Wiki
pages have an edit button displayed on the screen
and the user can click on this to access an easy-
to-use online editing tool to change or even
delete the contents of the page in question.
Simple, hypertext-style linking between pages is
used to create a navigable set of pages.
Examples of wikis:
http://wiki.oss-watch.ac.uk/ *
http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/CETIS_Wiki *
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page *
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_P
age
http://www.wikihow.com
Software:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki *
http://www.socialtext.com/products/overview
http://www.twiki.org/
http://uniwakka.sourceforge.net/HomePage

Online notes on using wikis in education:

2 http://www.wikiineducation.com/display/ikiw/
Ebersbach et al. traces this from the Hawaiian word, wikiwiki, meaning 'quick' or 'hurry' from Ward
Home *
Cunningham's concept of the wikiwikiWeb, in 1995.
Unlike blogs, wikis generally have a history function, which allows previous versions to be
examined, and a rollback function, which restores previous versions. Proponents of the
power of wikis cite the ease of use (even playfulness) of the tools, their extreme flexibility
and open access as some of the many reasons why they are useful for group working
(Ebersbach et al., 2006; Lamb, 2004).

There are undeniably problems for systems that allow such a level of openness, and
Wikipedia itself has suffered from problems of malicious editing and vandalism (Stvilia et
al., 2005). However, there are also those who argue that acts of vandalism and mistakes are
rectified quite quickly by the self-moderation processes at work. Alternatively, restricting
access to registered users only, is often used for professional, work group wikis (Cych,
2006).

2.3 Tagging and social bookmarking

A tag is a keyword that is added to a digital object (e.g. a website, picture or video clip) to
describe it, but not as part of a formal classification system. One of the first large-scale
applications of tagging was seen with the introduction of Joshua Schacter’s del.icio.us
website, which launched the ‘social bookmarking’ phenomenon.
Examples of tagging services:
Social bookmarking systems share a number of http://www.connotea.org/
common features (Millen et al., 2005): They allow http://www.citeulike.org/*
users to create lists of ‘bookmarks’ or ‘favourites’, to http://www.librarything.com/
store these centrally on a remote service (rather than http://del.icio.us/
within the client browser) and to share them with other http://www.sitebar.org
http://www.furl.net/index.jsp
users of the system (the ‘social’ aspect). These http://www.stumbleupon.com/
bookmarks can also be tagged with keywords, and an http://www.blinklist.com/
important difference from the ‘folder’-based http://www.digg.com/
categorisation used in traditional, browser-based http://www.rawsugar.com
bookmark lists is that a bookmark can belong in more http://del.icio.us/elearningfocus/web2.0 *
than one category. Using tags, a photo of a tree could
be categorised with both ‘tree’ and ‘larch’, for example.

The concept of tagging has been widened far beyond website bookmarking, and services
like Flickr (photos), YouTube (video) and Odeo (podcasts) allow a variety of digital
artefacts to be socially tagged. For example, the BBC’s Shared Tags3 project is an
experimental service that allows members of the public to tag BBC News online items. A
particularly important example within the context of higher education is Richard Cameron’s
CiteULike4, a free service to help academics to store, organise and share the academic
papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the Web that interests you, you click a
button and add it to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation
details, so you don’t have to type them in. This tool was used during the research for this
report.

The idea of tagging has been expanded to include what are called tag clouds: groups of tags
(tag sets) from a number of different users of a tagging service, which collates information
about the frequency with which particular tags are used. This frequency information is often
displayed graphically as a ‘cloud’ in which tags with higher frequency of use are displayed
in larger text.
3
http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/prototypes/archives/2005/05/bbc_shared_tags.html [last accessed 16/01/07].
4
http://www.citeulike.org/ [last accessed 16/01/07].
Large organisations are beginning to explore the potential of these new tools and their
concepts for knowledge management across the enterprise. For example, IBM is
investigating social bookmarking through their intranet-based DogEar tool (Millen et al.,
2005). In education, JISC's e-Learning Focus service has set up a del.icio.us account at:
http://del.icio.us/elearningfocus [last accessed 07/02/07].

Folksonomy versus collabulary

One outcome from the practice of tagging has been the rise of the ‘folksonomy’.
Unfortunately, the term has not been used consistently and there is confusion about its
application. More will be said about this in the section on network effects, but for now it is
sufficient to note that there is a distinction between a folksonomy (a collection of tags
created by an individual for their own personal use) and a collabulary (a collective
vocabulary).

2.4 Multimedia sharing

One of the biggest growth areas has been amongst

services that facilitate the storage and sharing of Well known photo sharing services:
http://www.flickr.com/
multimedia content. Well known examples include http://www.ourpictures.com/
YouTube (video) Flickr (photographs) and Odeo http://www.snapfish.com/
(podcasts). These popular services take the idea of the http://www.fotki.com/
‘writeable’ Web (where users are not just consumers
but contribute actively to the production of Web Well known video sharing services:
http://www.youtube.com/
content) and enable it on a massive scale. Literally http://www.getdemocracy.com/broadcast/ *
millions of people now participate in the sharing and http://eyespot.com/
exchange of these forms of media by producing their http://ourmedia.org/ *
own podcasts, videos and photos. This development http://vsocial.com
has only been made possible through the widespread http://www.videojug.com/
adoption of high quality, but relatively low cost digital Well known podcasting sites:
media technology such as hand-held video cameras. http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcasts.
html
2.5 Audio blogging and podcasting http://btpodshow.com/
http://www.audblog.com/
http://odeo.com/
Podcasts are audio recordings, usually in MP3 format, http://www.ourmedia.org/ *
of talks, interviews and lectures, which can be played http://connect.educause.edu/ *
either on a desktop computer or on a wide range of http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php
handheld MP3 devices. Originally called audio blogs http://www.impala.ac.uk/ *
they have their roots in efforts to add audio streams to http://www.law.dept.shef.ac.uk/podcasts/ *
early blogs (Felix and Stolarz, 2006). Once standards
had settled down and Apple introduced the
commercially successful iPod MP3 player and its
associated iTunes software, the process started to become known as podcasting5. This term
is not without some controversy since it implies that only the Apple iPod will play these
5
Coined by Ben Hammersley in a Guardian article on 12th February 2004:
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1145689,00.html [last accessed 14/02/07].
files, whereas, in actual fact, any MP3 player or PC with the requisite software can be used.
A more recent development is the introduction of video podcasts (sometimes shortened to
vidcast or vodcast): the online delivery of video-on-demand clips that can be played on a
PC, or again on a suitable handheld player (the more recent versions of the Apple iPod for
example, provide for video playing).

A podcast is made by creating an MP3 format audio file (using a voice recorder or similar
device), uploading the file to a host server, and then making the world aware of its existence
through the use of RSS (see next section). This process (known as enclosure) adds a URL
link to the audio file, as well as directions to the audio file’s location on the host server, into
the RSS file (Patterson, 2006).

Podcast listeners subscribe to the RSS feeds and receive information about new podcasts as
they become available. Distribution is therefore relatively simple. The harder part, as those
who listen to a lot of podcasts know, is to produce a good quality audio file. Podcasting is
becoming increasingly used in education (Brittain et al., 2006; Ractham and Zhang, 2006)
and recently there have been moves to establish a UK HE podcasting community6.

2.6 RSS and syndication

RSS is a family of formats which allow users to find out about updates to the content of
RSS-enabled websites, blogs or podcasts without actually having to go and visit the site.
Instead, information from the website (typically, a new story's title and synopsis, along with
the originating website’s name) is collected within a feed (which uses the RSS format) and
‘piped’ to the user in a process known as syndication.

In order to be able to use a feed a prospective user must install a software tool known as an
aggregator or feed reader, onto their computer desktop. Once this has been done, the user
must decide which RSS feeds they want to receive and then subscribe to them. The client
software will then periodically check for updates to the RSS feed and keep the user informed
of any changes.

Illustration 1: Example of an RSS feed aggregation tool (NetNewsWire).

6
See: http://www.podcasting.blog-city.com/tags/?/ukhepodnet [last accessed 10/02/07].
Technically, RSS is an XML-based data format for websites to exchange
files that contain publishing information and summaries of the site’s
contents. Indeed, in its earliest incarnation, RSS was understood to stand QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

for Rich Site Summary (Doctorow, 2002). For a variety of historical

reasons there are a number of RSS formats (RSS 0.91, RSS 0.92, RSS
1.0, RSS 2.0) and there are some issues of incompatibility7. It is worth
noting that RSS 2.0 is not simply a later version of RSS 1.0, but is a different format. As it
has become more widely used for blog content syndication, in later versions RSS became
known as Really Simple Syndication8. A lot of blogging tools now create and publish these
RSS feeds automatically and webpages and blogs frequently display small RSS icons and
links to allow a quick process of registering to get a feed from the site (see above, right).

In 2003 a new syndication system was proposed and developed under the name Atom in
order to clear up some of the inconsistencies between RSS versions and the problems with
the way they interoperate. This consists of two standards: the Atom Syndication Format, an
XML language used for Web feeds, and the Atom Publishing Protocol (APP), a HTTP-
based protocol for creating and updating Web resources. There is considerable discussion
between proponents of RSS and Atom as to which is the best way forward for syndication.
The two most important differences between the two are, firstly, that the development of
Atom is taking place through a formal and open standards process within the IETF9, and,
secondly, that with Atom the actual content of the feed item’s encoding (known as the
payload container) is more clearly defined. Atom can also support the enclosure of more
than one podcast file at a time (see podcasting section) and so multiple file formats of the
same podcast can be syndicated at the same time10.

2.7 Newer Web 2.0 services and applications

As we have seen, there are a number of technology services that are often posited as
representing the Web 2.0 concept in some way. In recent months, however, there has been
an explosion of new ideas, applications and start-up companies working on ways to extend
existing services. Some of these are likely to become more important than others, and some
are certainly more likely to be more relevant to education than others. There is such a deluge
of new services that it is often difficult to keep track of what’s ‘out there’ or to make sense
of what each provides. I suggest there are two ways of helping with this process. Firstly, to
make sense of what the service is trying to do in the context of the overall Web 2.0 ‘big
ideas’ presented in section three. Secondly, as new services become available they can be
categorised roughly in terms of what they attempt to do, e.g. aggregate user data, construct a
social network etc.

In Table 1 I make a first attempt at such a categorisation process based on a small range of
some of the newer services. Such a table is only the beginning of the process and can only

7
See: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssVersionHistory for a history of the versions [last accessed
14/02/07].
8
See RSS Advisory Board service: http://www.rssboard.org/ [last accessed 14/02/07].
9
The Internet Engineering Task Force.
10
More technical detail of the Atom standard can be found at: http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/atompub-
charter.html and http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-atom10.html [last accessed
14/02/07].
be snapshot as this is a fluid market with new tools and start-up companies being announced
on almost a daily basis (see, for example, TechCrunch’s regular updates11 on start-ups and
new ideas; or eConsultant’s Web 2.0 directory which recently listed over 1,200 services in
fifty categories ranging from blogging to Wifi)12.

Table 1: Newer Web 2.0 services

Categorisation Explanation and Examples of service

(based on indicative links to the
what they big ideas of Web 2.0
attempt to do) (see section 3 for
more detail)
Social Professional and Professional networking:
Networking social networking http://www.siphs.com/aboutus.jsp
sites that facilitate https://www.linkedin.com/
meeting people, http://www.zoominfo.com/
finding like minds, Social networking:
sharing content— www.myspace.com
uses ideas from www.facebook.com
harnessing the power http://fo.rtuito.us/
of the crowd, http://www.spock.com/ (test beta only)
network effect and http://www.flock.com/
individual http://www.bebo.com/
production/user
generated content.

Aggregation Gather information http://www.techmeme.com/

services from diverse sources http://www.google.co.uk/nwshp?hl=en
across the Web and http://www.blogbridge.com/
publish in one place. http://www.suprglu.com/
Includes news and http://www.netvibes.com/
RSS feed aggregators
and tools that create a
single webpage with
all your feeds and
email in one place—
uses ideas from
individual
production/user
generated content.
Collect and aggregate http://www.attentiontrust.org/
user data, user http://www.digg.com/
‘attention’ (what you
look at) and
intentions—uses
ideas from the

11
TechCrunch is a blog dedicated to profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies:
www.techcrunch.com
12
http://www.econsultant.com/web2/
 architecture of
participation, data on
epic scale and power
of the crowd.
Data 'mash- Web services that http://www.housingmaps.com/
ups' pull together data http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/ispecies/
from different http://www.rrove.com/set/item/59/top-11-us-
sources to create a universities
new service (i.e. http://www.blears.net/weather/ (world weather
aggregation and from BBC RSS feed)
recombination).
Uses, for example,
ideas from data on
epic scale and
openness of data.
Tracking and Services that keep http://technorati.com/about/
filtering track of, filter, http://www.digg.com/
content analyse and allow http://www.blogpulse.com
search of the growing http://cloudalicio.us/about/
amounts of Web 2.0
content from blogs,
multimedia sharing
services etc. Uses
ideas from e.g. data
on epic scale.
Collaborating Collaborative http://www.squidoo.com/
reference works (like http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia
Wikipedia) that are
built using wiki-like
software tools. Uses
ideas from harnessing
the power of the
crowd.
Collaborative, Web- http://vyew.com/always-on/collaboration/
based project and http://www.systemone.at/en/technology/overview#
work group http://www.37signals.com/
productivity tools.
Uses architecture of
participation.
Replicate Web-based desktop http://www.google.com/google-d-s/tour1.html
office-style application/document http://www.stikkit.com/
software in the tools. Replicate http://www.backpackit.com/tour
browser desktop applications.
Based on
technological
developments.
Source ideas Seek ideas, solutions http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome
or work from to problems or get http://www.innocentive.com/
the crowd tasks completed by
out-sourcing to users
of the Web. Uses the
 idea of power of the
crowd.

In the second part of this document we will present a catalog of the range of tools
that we observed teachers using or that teachers reported using. We divided the
resources into the following four categories:
1. Tools that create or support a virtual learning environment.
2. Tools that support communication and cultivate relationships.
3. Resources to support teaching and learning.
4. Tools enabling students to create artifacts representing what they are
learning.

1. Tools That Create or Support a Virtual Learning Environment

The teachers and schools we visited used different Web 2.0 tools or programs to
create virtual spaces or virtual networks that support their pedagogical goals, both
at the classroom and the district level. This section describes some platform teachers
used to create or support their virtual learning environments and other tools they
used to plan lessons or create virtual materials.
Table 1. Tools that create or support a virtual learning environment
ActivExpression basic application on the Promethean board
Blackboard learning management system
DropBox stores and shares files and folders via Internet
Edmodo social platform and learning management system
ExamView builds comprehensive tests

GoKnow software learning environment for mobile devices

iWeb Apple software for building websites
MyUdutu rapid e-learning authoring tool
Puzzlemaker builds puzzles
Quia builds activities, quizzes, online worksheets
Raptivity rapid e-learning authoring tool
Sharepoint Microsoft collaborative work space
Schoology learning management system
Trackstar lesson plan storage/depository

Virtual learning environments. A virtual learning environment (VLE) is a

software platform that provides a private (password-‐protected) virtual classroom
space in which teachers can perform a variety of both static and interactive tasks
and provide classroom resources. A VLE system might also be known as a course
management system (CMS), or learning management system (LMS), but the
concept of a VLE is used to emphasize that the platform is a tool for teaching and
learning as much as for management. VLEs provide a range of functions:
administrative tasks such as file storage; assessment and grading; links to a variety
of activities for students; and tools such as blogs and forums for communication
with and among students.
For the teachers we observed, these VLEs also served as a type of online
“homeroom,” functioning the way a Web portal might have functioned in the past
—as the starting place for most of the online activity connected to a particular
class. Many of the learning platforms had built-‐in tools such as blogs or wikis.
Some of the more innovative teachers we visited had course pages built around a
class blog that served as a central forum, or central meeting space, for the students.
Some VLEs were districtwide, that is, the district had purchased a license and
required teachers to have accounts and/or home pages. Other VLEs were created
and used by individual teachers, who encouraged their use by word of mouth.
Examples of the ways in which we observed teachers using VLEs include the
following:
As a Web portal that connects students to resources (both outside and within
the VLE).
As a way to stimulate student interest in a topic.
As a storage space for student work.
As a way to track student progress.
As a space for student discussion.
 As a place for to post assignments.
As a way for students to work collaboratively on assignments.
As a way to ensure that all virtual classroom work and discussion happens
within an educational space and under the purview of the teacher.

Of the three districts we visited, two had districtwide platforms (Blackboard and
Moodle); in the third, individual teachers created their own course site with a free
VLE (Edmodo). These three VLEs are described below:
Blackboard is contracted through the district. Districts can opt for a variety of
tools within Blackboard as part of their package, so it can be tailored to a
district’s needs. Teachers build a homepage, which links to different tools and
sections (such as the discussion board).
Edmodo is currently free so does not offer districtwide contracts. Defining
itself as a social platform for education, it has the look and feel of Facebook,
the popular social networking site. Most of the action on Edmodo happens on
(or through) the teacher’s homepage.
Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is a free and
open-‐source e-‐learning software platform. Moodle is similar to Edmodo in that
it emphasizes classroom community building. The district we visited that was
using Moodle had contracted with a local webmaster to use Moodle to develop
its VLE.
Other VLEs are also available. A technology administrator in one of the
districts mentioned her interest in a VLE called Schoology; however, we did
not observe use of this site. Another teacher, who had previously used a
number of Palm-‐based activities in her classroom, was using GoKnow, a VLE
for mobile devices.
Classroom management tools. We found that teachers had very positive
reactions to a variety of administrative tools that were either built into VLEs or
were separate programs that they could embed into their pages. All of the virtual
learning platforms had student accounts and ways for students to hand in
homework online. All of the teachers liked the convenience of automatically
keeping track of student work and progress. Some teachers were also using
automatic e-‐mail and text messages to remind students about homework or field
trips. Perhaps to compensate for adolescent tendencies not to tell parents
anything, two middle school teachers, in different districts, were even using built-‐
in e-‐mail notification systems to keep the parents informed of class activities.
Quiz- and test-building tools.1 Teachers also spoke about tools, for example, Quia
and ExamView, that allowed them to create and administer online quizzes and
tests. They appreciated these tools because they offer quick and easy ways to check
what students know, and students can do these quizzes as part of their own self-‐
assessments. Quia allows teachers to create their own quizzes as well as other

1
Other tools, like BrainPop or Study Island, also offer quizlike activities but are not principally test-‐
making tools for teachers. Those sites are covered in the group of Resources to support teaching and
learning.
Web 2.0: Changing the culture of learning

learning activities (flashcards, word scrambles, etc.). ExamView offers a bank of

thousands of test items aligned to state standards for language arts, reading, math,
science, and social studies. One teacher who used ExamView within Blackboard felt
that it really helped her differentiate instruction, as the online tests and bank of
test items made it easy for her to test, reteach, and then retest as many students as
she needed for any level of her content. Most of these tools have an extensive bank
of test items that will automatically update or refresh a test with new items if the
same student takes it again.
Another quiz tool, ActiveExpressions, is part of the Promethean board package. It
includes a handheld device, or clicker, that students use to respond to questions;
the responses are then collected in real time and in various formats (graphs for
numerical responses, text for word responses) on the Promethean board. This
application allows the teacher to check students’ understanding in mid-‐lesson with
quick quizzes with automatic tabulation ,on the whiteboard. The teacher we
observed who used this tool told us that she often shows students pictures at the
beginning of a unit and then asks them to text in, simultaneously, what they think
the unit is going to be about. This approach both engages students and tests their
foreshadowing abilities.
E-learning authoring tools. These tools help teachers quickly build interactive
teaching resources or lesson plans that are then stored online. Most teachers we
interviewed built their simple resources using either Word or Excel, which they
then uploaded into their virtual classroom space, but one teacher did report using
an e-‐learning authoring tool, Myudutu, to create lessons and resources that she was
able to import into the district Moodle. E-‐learning or rapid e-‐learning resources
allow teachers to create simple interactive learning materials, such as worksheets
that auto-‐grade or quizzes that adapt to individual ability by changing subsequent
questions based on the student’s response to the previous one, or multimedia
resources to support their lessons.
Flipchart is another software tool included with the Promethean board that
teachers can use to create interactive presentations for students. Not only does it
provide teachers with a wide variety of multimedia resources to use during the
lesson, but the resulting flipcharts can also be shared with students via e-‐mail, so
that they can then use the teacher’s presentation to review the lesson. One teacher
showed us a lesson she created on Flipchart incorporating music, text, photos, and
videos to demonstrate the influence of gospel music on jazz. Her students had
never heard of, say, Mahalia Jackson or Aretha Franklin, and she was able to embed
links to audio clips of these singers and others in the Flipchart. She said she
couldn’t imagine teaching this unit with just a textbook, and that this tool “brought
the outside world in” for her students.
This same teacher also created unit reviews for students using Flipchart and
embedded quizzes into the review.
Document- or resource-sharing tools. These allow documents to be edited
collaboratively and asynchronously, as well as making it easy for a community of
users to share professional resources such as websites. To the extent that VLEs
provide places for teachers to upload and make resources available for students,
they support sharing resources; “document sharing,” however, refers to a
technology-‐enabled way to keep track of a co-‐authored document that may change
over time. Some teachers, for example, mentioned Blackboard’s document-‐sharing
capacity, but those teachers also reported that it was easier to use Google Docs.
Google Docs allows multiple users to share, create, and edit documents (in
Word or Excel) collaboratively and asynchronously. We saw students using this
tool to work collaboratively on documents for group projects without having to
schedule face-‐to-‐face meetings. We also spoke to a teacher who used it to
provide fast feedback to students on their work.
Delicious allows for the storage and sharing of Web references. In the first year
of our research, a group of teachers from the same school used Delicious to
share websites with one another.

2. Tools That Support Communication and Cultivate Relationships

Two central features of the classrooms and teaching practices we encountered in
the course of our observation visits were the range of tools and techniques that
teachers and students used to communicate with one another (and with parents)
in new ways and the ways in which this intergroup communication fostered a
learning community.
Table 2. Tools that support communication and cultivate
relationships
online, chronological presentation of commentary
Blogs and information
Microsoft product that supports communication
Communicator and collaboration
Diigo social networking bookmarking tool
Delicious social networking bookmarking tool
ePals online international learning community
Jing social networking tool
Twitter social networking tool
sending text messages via cellphone to another
Texting phone or to a website

This section presents some of the tools and techniques used to support both the
method and content of student-‐teacher communication. Our emphasis here is on
text-‐based communication; video-‐ and audio-‐based activities are discussed in the
section on tools enabling students to create artifacts.
Wikis and blogs are often lumped together as Web 2.0 communication tools, but
our observations suggest that they function differently as pedagogical tools. Wikis
are collaborative writing tools that permit the creation and editing of content by
multiple users. Blogs (“Web logs”) are chronologically organized online writing
spaces that can be constructed individually or collaboratively. Another
communication tool we found in use was Twitter. In addition, some teachers used
Web 2.0: Changing the culture of learning

the automatic texting feature built into the VLE to reach students and parents (see
section on classroom management tools above).
Some teachers we interviewed described wikis as having a more research-‐
oriented focus than blogs, thus serving as an opportunity for students to
collaborate while learning content or skills. Overall, we did not find very many
teachers using wikis, and most teachers we interviewed did not seem to think
them a particularly useful tool. We encountered a variety of wiki tasks, but found
only a few teachers using the wiki for a group-‐authored document. Most teachers
used wikis in more static ways, essentially as a place to store class documents. One
elementary school teacher used wikis as a format for her students to collaborate
on creative writing projects: she gave groups of students lists of characters,
settings, and activities from which to choose and then had the groups work on
building a story together using their selections from the lists.
We observed “static wikis” in use by teachers we observed in a district that
required teachers to have a wiki. Most of those teachers had created their own
VLEs elsewhere (e. g., Edmodo) but they were using the required wiki on the
district’s site to post the class syllabus, rubrics, and accompanying samples of
student work. While their VLE was restricted to students, the wiki was open to
parents as well. One teacher we interviewed was aware that this was not a
sophisticated use of a wiki, but it met his need for increased transparency with
parents and helped them gain a sense of the caliber of work that was expected for a
given assignment. He felt that parents better understood the grades he gave as a
result, particularly when these were lower than parents were hoping.
Blogs are chronologically organized online writing spaces that can be constructed
individually or collaboratively. Outside the classroom context, blogs are usually
written by one individual, with other individuals then posting comments. However,
most teachers we observed did not use blogs in this way. The most common
approach we saw was the creation of a classroom blog as shared space for students
and teachers. The teachers we interviewed characterized blogs as more of a
conversation tool, to inspire interest and communication. As with wikis, we
observed a wide variety of blog tasks, which fell broadly into classroom blogs and
individual blogs or journals.
Classroom blogs, centralized, teacher-‐directed blogs, were often found on the class
or VLE homepage, where students would post comments. Often, the teacher’s goal
was to generate a discussion among students, via such comments, in response to a
teacher-‐generated statement or question. We found examples of blog tasks that
had at least one of the following four pedagogical objectives: to elicit prior
knowledge, generate interest, support student debates, or provide students with
feedback from their peers. A number of teachers used blog tasks as activities to
test prior knowledge or generate interest. For example, one social studies teacher
used a blog to introduce her Civil War unit. The night before beginning the unit,
she posted the question, “What do you know about the Civil War?” to the blog and
required students to post a response, as well as a comment on another student’s
response, by a certain time. Both the students and the teacher reported that this
approach generated excitement as students posted facts, tried to outdo one
another with more facts, or disagreed with one another on historical
interpretations. Generating hundreds of posts in one evening, this activity not only
engaged students in the topic, it permitted the teacher to gauge student knowledge
and misconceptions prior to beginning the unit. A language arts teacher in a
different district used a blog task to generate interest and prior knowledge before
teaching the science fiction novel Flowers for Algernon, posting the blog prompt,
“What is intelligence, and does it matter?” After conducting a spirited online debate
about street smarts, book learning, and human dignity throughout the evening, the
next day her students started to read the tale of man whose very low IQ is
artificially tripled but who then finds his newfound “intelligence” quickly slipping
away as the effects wear off.
We also heard about many blog debates. The students really liked these activities,
claiming that they were different from classroom discussions. Students felt that the
class blog allowed them to participate even if they were too shy to speak in class. A
blog also allowed them to give more critical feedback, because they could take the
time to write a statement that was critical of another’s position but not mean-‐
spirited. Students in one middle school class told us of a very heated blog
discussion they had had about whether the Iditarod dog sled race was animal
cruelty or not. One final example of a blog task requiring students to give feedback
to one another is both powerful and very particular. A middle school art teacher
spends a lot of time helping her students learn to give and receive criticism about
their artwork. After a few weeks of face-‐to-‐face “crits” for training, she moves
online. Each week on her class blog, a student posts a digital image of a recent
work and self-‐critiques it; over the week the other students post their feedback.
Individual blogs or journals, which could be public or private, required students to
write and post individually. For some of these blog tasks, other students were
expected to comment. From what we observed, however, it was difficult for
teachers to create meaningful educational activities using these individual blogs.
Some of the problems were logistical, as students were often required to log in and
out of several other students’ blogs in order to make comments; thus, not only was
the resulting communication isolated from the larger group and often inauthentic,
but the mechanics were frustrating. For example, in a French class we observed, all
students had an individual blog, where they both posted their homework and
commented on other students’ assignments on their respective blogs. Many
students were not getting credit for their comments, however, because in order for
the teacher to see them, the comment first had to be accepted, and thus made
public, by the student to whose blog it had been posted. Most students did not
remember to accept their peers’ comments, so the teacher then had to create a
paper-‐and-‐pencil checklist to track who had and had not completed the task.
Besides these logistical problems, it also proved challenging to design a meaningful
blog task that would motivate students to write posts and read one another’s
comments. For example, in the same French class students were assigned to post
the French names of three favorite foods to their blog and then comment on their
peers’ selections. The task of selecting an individual blog task that generates real,
meaningful communication appears to be very difficult, which may explain why we
found that the most successful individual blog activities were tasks that only the
teacher read.
Web 2.0: Changing the culture of learning

One teacher treated private individual blogs (not accessible to other students) as a
space for students to reflect freely on their classroom experience and learning and
to promote communication between herself and each student. She required
students to post regular reflections on their blogs, in which they were free to
express any and all feelings about the class. These blogs thus served as the
students’ private journals, and the teacher felt that they were an effective way for
her to understand what individual students were thinking and feeling about the
work of the class. In another example, a Spanish teacher we observed in the first
year of our research used a travel blog activity for each chapter of her textbook,
centered on a Spanish-‐speaking country. She had her students blog about an
imaginary visit to that country. Her goal was to get her students to write in
Spanish, but she also liked the fact that a Web-‐based journal allowed them to post
pictures, news clippings, advertisements, and so on as part of their blogs.
A social networking site is designed to promote communication among the
members of a particular community. While these sites are quite popular for
personal use (most students we interviewed reported having either a Facebook or
MySpace page), we did not observe much classroom use of them. However, many
teachers used the VLE to create a truly educational SNS.
Twitter, which we did encounter a few teachers using, is an SNS that allows
users to post short blurbs, known as “tweets,” of up to140 characters in
length, as well as read the tweets of other users. These messages are by default
visible to the general public, but a user can subscribe to other users’ tweets,
which then show up on that user’s own home page. And this is the extent to
which the community and/or audience can be controlled. In our research, we
observed Twitter being used less as a space for dialogue and more as a way for
members of the classroom community to read and post updates on activities.
The most effective uses of Twitter we observed were highly supervised
instances in which students were asked to post with a particular audience in
mind—usually parents—about what they were doing or learning in that class
or on a field trip.
One teacher who taught a gifted and talented pull-‐out program for students in
grades 1 to 3 used a class Twitter account so that each group of students could
share what they were doing with the students from the other grades: “They
can see what other kids are doing in the other classes. First graders get to see
[what] third graders are doing. My first graders like it more than anyone.”
We also observed Twitter being used in less successful ways. In one classroom
the teacher asked students to post reactions to their classmates’ final projects
while they were actually presenting. While the comments were positive (e.g.,
“Nate’s was cool; I liked his diorama”), they were not very constructive; nor
did students appear to take it very seriously.

3. Resources to Support Teaching and Learning

In the networked world of these innovative classrooms we visited, teachers used a
variety of Web-‐based resources to present material to students and engage them in
larger conversations about the content. Unlike the e-‐authoring tools described
above, teachers do not need to build such resources themselves. This section
presents some of these resources and provides examples of how they were used in
the classroom.
Table 3. Resources to support teaching and learning
Brainpop animated, curriculum-based content activities
Curriculum Associates online curricular materials
Google Earth satellite images of the Earth
Grammar Girl audio and text "mini-talks" on grammar
Holt Online online textbook and grading system
Kto8.com database of exercises that reinforce critical skills
Mountain
Math/Language/Science skill building and test prep software
ReadPlease text-to-speech software
Starfall phonics website
Study Mate interactive assessment activities
Study Island online standards-based learning tools
SurveyMonkey online survey tool
Thinkfinity standards-based lesson plans and resources
YouTube video-sharing site

Video and audio resources. Teachers downloaded these materials from online
libraries or resource repositories. Some of these repositories, like Teacher’s
Domain, were specifically for education; others were general audience sites such
as YouTube. While many of these sites also allow users to upload their own
resources (e.g., posting one’s own video to YouTube), we did not observe this use
as an educational activity for students in our research. We mostly learned how
teachers used these sites to bring audiovisual resources into their classrooms, and
we noted how they could become exciting tools for learning via display devices
such as interactive whiteboards. In the classrooms we visited, the technology was
able to bring such resources into the learning process quickly and seamlessly.
A teacher with a collection of well-‐chosen videos is well placed to take advantage
of a teachable moment. For example, we observed one teacher whose students
were reviewing literary devices for the state language arts assessment. A question
about flashback and foreshadowing came up. The teacher quickly pulled up the
Disney cartoon “Ugly Duckling” on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=k3t5BmU3uYQ) on the interactive whiteboard and had the students identify the
different literary devices used in that nine-‐minute version of the story. The class
stopped or replayed the cartoon at various points to discuss the difference
between foreshadowing and flashback (as well as other literary devices), or to
compare the use of devices here to their use in other films and television shows
(the use of flashback in Lost was of particular interest to these students). In
another example, a high school world history teacher shared how he changed his
way of teaching the movie Gandhi once he obtained a digital version through
United Streaming. The students read about Gandhi in the textbook, but he uses the
movie to help students connect to history as real life. He likes to stop the video at
key points to discuss events portrayed with his students,
Web 2.0: Changing the culture of learning

and it used to take him over three days to go through the entire movie. But with a
whiteboard and a digital version, he now goes directly to the key scenes he needs
in order to set up the discussion and shows only about 15 minutes of the movie in
class. Students watch the entire movie on their own first, but he needs only one
teaching period.
YouTube and Vidler are free video-‐sharing sites. TeacherTube is an educational
version of YouTube but the teachers we interviewed used the general site
because of the far greater number of resources.
Teacher’s Domain, a free online media library created by the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting, offers material produced by public television and
specifically packaged for use in K–12 classrooms.
United Streaming is a subscription site for video resources that schools or
districts can purchase.
Multimedia resources. Other types of visual resources available online besides
videos include the mapping program Google Maps or earth imaging program
Google Earth. Google Earth is an interactive satellite image of the entire planet that
allows one to “fly” over the Earth and zoom in on any spot close enough to see
buildings and cars. As one zooms in close, a setting on Google Earth displays
webcams and pictures tagged to different places on the globe. One history teacher
we interviewed explained that he uses a Google Earth “flyover” on the interactive
whiteboard to introduce each new region to his class. For the unit on Asia, he starts
the flyover from above his midwestern school; spins over to Asia to show the
students the Great Wall of China and the Japanese Islands; and finally zooms in to
India, then New Delhi, and eventually a webcam showing a live feed of a particular
commuter train station in that city. As the students watch the ebb and flow of
thousands of people in the station, he begins to discuss the role of public
transportation in the social and economic life of a city, which he then connects
back to a conversation about highways and public transit in the students’ own city
in the Midwest.
Simple games and skill-building sites. These tools support individualized
student reinforcement activities and test preparation. Some teachers we observed
were able to use these tools to meet students’ individual learning goals without the
students themselves being aware that they had been placed in different ability
groups. For example, the teacher would direct students to a set of exercises at one
of these sites through their individual folders in the virtual classroom space,
simply assigning different ability levels as appropriate without announcing the
variations publicly. Students were then able to move at their own pace, and the
teacher could easily check on their progress. Here are three sites the teachers we
interviewed mentioned:
Brain Pop provides free, animated, online educational activities (concepts and
review) in a variety of subject areas that are tied to state standards.
Kto8.com is a subscription site that offers skill-‐building exercises from
kindergarten to eighth grade. Game activities are interspersed with the
 exercises, and students earn more “lives” depending on how well they do in
the exercises.
Study Island offers online test preparation activities in a variety of subject
areas ; schools must purchase a license to use it.

4. Tools Enabling Students to Create Artifacts Representing What They Are

Learning
Web 2.0 tools also offer a variety of ways for students themselves to create
products that reflect what they are learning. Some tools are completely online, and
students need nothing more than Internet access to create a document or a
presentation; others are programs that can be run from a class computer or a
mobile device such as a Flip® video camera or iPod.
Video production. We found a number of teachers using simple video production
tools to allow students to create quick video presentations. The tools ranged from
Flip cameras and Moviemaker software to online video tools, such as Newsmaker,
that use a laptop’s built-‐in webcam. A central feature in all cases was that teachers
sought to limit the amount of production time involved in making these videos.
The teachers using these tools spoke about their ease of use and specifically
limited the amount of time students spent on editing or production. They wanted
students to focus on content and learning rather than production values. For
example, a pair of teachers working on a poetry unit with their middle school
students were using the book Immersed in Verse, by Allan Wolf, which covers six
genres of poetry from classic poets to hip-‐hop to Goth poets. Students were divided
into groups, with each assigned to make a video about their life if they were a poet
from a different genre. The videos we saw were engaging, humorous, and to the
point, and the students had completed them in two class periods. Using a Flip
camera and a quick upload to Moviemaker, they made a short video in no time at
all. An elementary teacher had her students making short newscasts about the
Titanic using the online tool Newsmaker. Using only the webcam attached to their
classroom computer, they finished their newscast in about 10 minutes. Such
activities provided the students with another way to think about how to organize
their information creatively, but without taking up too much time.
Newsmaker allows students to create their own newscasts, from writing to
recording to publishing online.
Camtasia is used to make video presentations for teaching.

Podcasting. This tool uses audio productions. We saw a couple of podcasting

activities used to support learning. In one first-‐grade classroom, students recorded
themselves reading their favorite story and then uploaded the podcast to the class
website, where they were able to access and listen to it with their parents at home.
In a middle school English class, students produced audiobook reviews that were
then uploaded to the class website. Creating an audio version of their own writing
allowed the students to explore the difference between reading and hearing
information. In our focus group with the students, they talked about having to
Web 2.0: Changing the culture of learning

rewrite some of their book reviews because “some of the words didn’t sound
right.”
Table 4. Tools enabling students to create artifacts representing what
they are learning.
Animoto video production tool
ArtRage painting and drawing software
open-source software for recording and editing audio
Audacity files
Audio streaming creates sound files
BibMe creates citations
Camtasia video production tool
Frontpage Microsoft web design software
Garage Band Apple software for recording and editing audio files
Glogster creates interactive posters
GoAnimate cartoon maker
Google Docs document sharing
KidPix drawing software
Mixbook creates picture books
Newsmaker platform to make student newscasts
Notetaker note-taking software
PhotoPeach creates slideshows with photos, text, sound
Picasa photo-editing software
Picnik photo editing
Prezi online presentation tool
Sketchy animation and drawing tool
Slideshare upload and share presentations
Snagit screen capture tool
Tuxpaint drawing program
VoiceThread creates online slide show with text or voice descriptions
Wordle creates graphics of word usage

Web-based multimedia tools. These allow students to create projects or

presentations completely online using a variety of media. They are similar to
PowerPoint but, because the tools are all online, it can be easier to embed links to
other websites into a presentation. We saw these tools being used for final
projects, as a way for students to demonstrate what they had learned from a
particular unit.
VoiceThread is a public online photo documentary tool that offers the option to
attach text or voice descriptions to the photographs. It also has the capacity for
viewers to comment on the pictures using voice or text. One teacher devised a
project for which she asked students to share stories about their home
traditions using photographs of objects and places important to them. Using
VoiceThread, students narrated comments discussing the photographs. The
teacher had previously assigned this activity as a text-‐only assignment, and
she reported that students used to write, on average, a five-‐paragraph essay,
about a page and a half, describing their home traditions. When students
created their work using VoiceThread, most wrote about four pages. When we
 asked students why they had written more this time, they told us that although using
this tool made the writing longer [in length], it was “more fun to do.” They said that they
“didn’t think about the writing” when using this tool.
Mixbook creates picture books from users’ uploaded photos and text. It contains a feature
that simulates turning the actual pages of a book. One teacher we observed offered this
tool to her students as one of their options for the creation of a study guide for an end-‐of-‐
unit review of language and grammar. The teacher reported that one of the things she
liked about Mixbook was that it comes with an embed code that students will post on the
class homepage when they are finished with their projects. She can then go to homepage
and click on the link a student has posted to go directly to that student’s work.
Glogster is actually an SNS, but we saw it used to make multimedia posters (glogs) with
text, hyperlinks, images, music, and video. It advertises itself as an SNS to promote the
idea that there is a community of creators that encourages meeting new people.
Picnik is a photo-‐editing tool that allows students to compile photographs into a slide
show. One teacher showed us a project for which students photographed their hands,
eyes, and profiles; edited them; put them together with a poem they wrote; and gave the
finished products to their parents or another family member as a holiday gift.

21
Facebook as a e-learning tool in teaching French

First steps in experimentation of the Facebook platform

The popularity of social networking site Facebook grows significantly every day. Originally used as a
social space, now he can find in many applications. My idea to use it as a learning space came to me
when I created my first Facebook account. For starters I wanted to use it as a community of
professional exchanges between teachers of French, but unfortunately we made one teachers of
English because it's much better represented. Thinking that I can learn a lot of things in contact with
these groups in the world, I made a professional community that includes floss language teachers
from all countries, and inspectors and trainers. The topics addressed in trade show and posts are most
on ICT and Internet use in teaching resources. Besides Facebook is an ICT tool, allowing the use of
multiple web based applications and even a wide range of computer skills.
After I transofrmat a social networking site where I could find only photos and reviews, a powerful
professional tool, I thought to use the same space and in the educational activity. I found that the
groups can have classes where they teach and that activity can use sites, ymess and e-mail to teach
French.

We wanted to teach subjects in French can using Facebook accounts, I can add to my account
professor. In this sense I searched names, places, work, country, characters, authors, and I was
shocked to discover that what I was referencing.
Since I did not find resource to help me in teaching my approach, I decided to build me one.
Therefore we have chosen as a character reference V.Hugo Cosette's novel "Les Miserables"
Opportunity to create a Facebook account in French offered me the possibility of specific terms
teaching French Facebook, and also reflections on the digital skills necessary.
The first time I realized I was wrong and an email account in Yahoo, out of habit in English.

A first problem that emerged was the need was knowledge of French. Since Facebook account this
word, we made a prince to help students assimilate the specific terminology.

22
Facebook account Aspects related to of a literary character

1. Knowledge of French
- To understand the written text
- To understand the spoken text
- To express in writing
2. Accessing literary work
Knowledge of basic operations internet:
- Opening a Search Engine
- Launch a search of a correct and proper spellings
- Finding specified document
- Conducting operations text analysis, synthesis text, copy-paste, post, systemic thinking
3. Create an e-mail
- Opening a specific site created e-mail accounts
- Creating an account and finalization (filling forms)
- Work with your e-mail (communication, making other accounts)
4. Create a Facebook account
- Apply French language in ICT
- Knowledge of internet terminology in French and especially the terms for achieving site
Facebook accounts
- Familiarity with the stages of an account with the email application in its realization
- Use specific detail of the character taken from the internet in achieving page presentation,
description, and in choosing the profile photo
- Choice, saving and posting profile picture

Cosette example Account

23
To Class VI have the topic an oral presentation about the election between novel and comic. I
searched a character near age students, namely Cosette in Les Miserables novel of V.Hugo. Because I
do not have a Facebook account and needed details and fragments of literature, I realized one myself.
It is difficult to transofrmi account Facebook account with limited options in working remotely or e-
learning, but with a little imagination can. So I realized that I inserted the account in the category
Articles, excerpts basis, which arose as seen on Fil d'Actualité.
As is already known, they can be put comments and add links to text and video, that can be a useful
platform of e-learning course.

Facebook Account resource for French language

The problem of using Internet resources in teaching French and especially adequacy French curricula
to ICT resources and the ICT minimum standards for students, made it necessary to create a
Facebook account in this regard.
Next I created this resource and their consistent themes in French language curriculum and standards
for ICT students.
have began to present content for the account:

24
 ZOHO Course Introduction
One look at the ZOHO screen (with all its boxes, buttons, and tabs), and you realize how much stuff
is going on here. This is no doubt because of the addition of a lot of tools from Microsoft Office and
other tools for communicate.

In this course , you will learn how to use ZOHO Editor for realizing documents and to collaborate
synchronous and asynchronous.

Lesson 1 - What is ZOHO ?

After completing this course you’ll be able to:

- explain the pourpose of ZOHO

- describe the differences between Word and ZOHO Editor

25
Prerequisites:

- knowledges and skills in using Word programme (M 3 – ECDL)

- knowledges to operate with Iexplorer : open, search an address, use links (M 7 – ECDL)

Section 1 – Remember Internet browser skills

The Internet is a worldwide network of networks that allows us, the users, to Inter-Relate,
Communicate, and Educate. Think of it as a system of roads, freeways, and bridges. All computer
users connected to this "network of networks" is what makes up the Internet. The Internet itself does
not store information. It is a slight misstatement to say that something was found on the Internet. It
should be said that something was found through or by using the Internet.

Main Keywords Associated With The Internet

 Web Browser
o Web Browsers are programs you use to view the Internet. There are two main Web
Browsers, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Netscape Navigator. The program we will
be using to view the Internet is Microsoft Internet Explorer.

 Website vs. Webpage

o A Website is a place within the Internet that contains multiple "Webpages". For
example the Bay City Public Schools is a "Website", while this Internet Tutorial Page
you are viewing is a "Webpage".
 URL
o URL is the address of a website or webpage. The URL for the main ZOHO website is
http://www.zoho.net/. This is the address that you would type in the address bar at the
top of Internet Explorer to go to ZOHO main page.

26
  Hyperlink
o A Hyperlink is a string of text or a picture that takes you to another part of a webpage
or another website/webpage. It is nothing more than a transport to somewhere else.
Hyperlinks are usually a different font color and are underlined. You can notice a
hyperlink by scrolling your mouse over the words and/or pictures and viewing

Section 2 – Making an account on ZOHO

For being able to use this complex tool, first of all you need an account registration.
In this case, in the right corner of the web site you find a login space:

27
 a) Creating a new user

28
 b) Clicking Sign up the next step you will read:

A verification email has been sent to

canarul@yahoo.com. Please click the
link given in that email to confirm your
registration. Otherwise, your
registration will get cancelled in 7 days.

Continue
c) In this moment you must log in your email provided at the registration and to check the
message from Zoho

d) the content of your mail provides you a link:

29
 By clicking it you will see a message on the site:

Confirmation successful !

Continuing the registration you will go to a page to log on with user and password.

You can use this user and password to take a tour of the ZOHO tools.

30
 Section 2 – If you click Continue from 1.b.

By clicking this button you arrive in the first tool:

ZOHO Writer

As you could see it’s the same with Microsoft Word .

31
Before starting the explanations for ZOHO Writer, let’s take a tour to remember the skills for using

Word processor.

Section 3 - Remember the Microsoft Word skills and knowledges:

Introduction into Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a powerful tool to create professional looking documents.

This tutorial will help you get started with Microsoft Word and may solve some of your problems,
but it is a very good idea to use the Help Files that come with Microsoft Word , or go to Microsoft's
web site located at http://microsoft.com/office/word/default.htm for further assistance.

Starting Microsoft Word

 Two Ways
1. Double click on the Microsoft Word icon on the desktop.

2. Click on Start --> Programs --> Microsoft Word

32
Viewing the toolbars

The toolbars in Microsoft Word provide easy access and functionality to the user. There are many
shortcuts that can be taken by using the toolbar. First, make sure that the proper toolbars are visible
on the screen.
1. Click View
2. Select Toolbars
3. Select Standard, Formatting, and Drawing
4. Other toolbars can be selected if you wish

Name Icon Description

New Blank Document Creates a new, blank file based on the default template.
Open (File menu) Opens or finds a file.
Saves the active file with its current file name, location, and
Save (File menu)
file format.
Sends the contents of the document as the body of the e-mail
Mail Recipient
message.
Prints the active file or selected items. To select print
Print (File menu)
options, on the File menu, click Print.
Print Preview (File menu) Shows how a file will look when you print it.
Checks the active document for possible spelling, grammar,
and writing style errors, and displays suggestions for
Spelling and Grammar (Tools
correcting them. To set spelling and grammar checking
menu)
options, click Options on the Tools menu, and then click the
Spelling and Grammar tab.
Removes the selection from the active document and places
Cut (Edit menu)
it on the Clipboard.
Copy (Edit menu) Copies the selection to the Clipboard.

33
 Inserts the contents of the Clipboard at the insertion point,
and replaces any selection. This command is available only
Paste (Edit menu)
if you have cut or copied an object, text, or contents of a
cell.
Copies the format from a selected object or text and applies
it to the object or text you click. To copy the formatting to
Format Painter (Standard
more than one item, double-click , and then click each
toolbar)
item you want to format. When you are finished, press ESC
or click again to turn off the Format Painter.
Reverses the last command or deletes the last entry you
Undo (Edit menu)
typed.
Redo (Edit menu) Reverses the action of the Undo command.
Hyperlink Inserts a new hyperlink or edits the selected hyperlink.
Displays the Tables and Borders toolbar, which contains
tools for creating, editing, and sorting a table and for adding
Tables and Borders
or changing borders to selected text, paragraphs, cells, or
objects.
Enter a magnification between 10 and 400 percent to reduce
Zoom
or enlarge the display of the active document.
The Office Assistant provides Help topics and tips to help
Office Assistant
you accomplish your tasks.

Creating A New Document

1. Click on File
2. Select New
o To create a blank document, simply select Blank Document. To create a document
based on one of the templates provided in Microsoft Word, select which one you
would like to create and select OK

Formatting Text
1. Highlight the text that you want to format by dragging your mouse over while holding down
the left mouse button
2. Change the text to your desire

34
Inserting a Table
1. Click where you want your table to go
2. Click Table at top of screen
3. Select Insert
4. Select Table
5. Give your table dimensions

Inserting a Picture
1. Click where you want your picture to go
2. Click Insert at top of screen
3. Select Picture
4. Select Clip Art or From File
5. Select picture and click Insert

Inserting Page Numbers and Date/Time

1. Click Insert at top of screen
2. Select Page Numbers and/or Date & Time

Spell Checking Your Document

1. Click Tools at top of screen
2. Select Spelling and Grammar

Section 4 – Differences between Microsoft Word and ZOHO Writer

We could realize this by putting the two windows one on the side to other:

35
If we annalise step by step the buttons of Word and ZOHO Writer, we could observe some

differences:

1. If to Word we have for a new page an icon, in ZOHO we have a button

2. The same thing is also for Prewiew
3. We could observe some new options

The fundamental characteristics of this tool is the possibility of:

Sharing, Colaboration and Adding comments synchronous and asynchronous.

YOUTUBE

Teaching France with Youtube

What is Youtube?

YouTube is a popular video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips.
YouTube was founded in February 2005 by three former PayPal employees. The service in San
Bruno uses Adobe Flash technology to display any kind of video: extracts from films, TV shows and
music videos, but also amateur video from blogs for example. In October 2006, Google announced
that after having reached an agreement, he would become the owner of the company in exchange for
Google shares with a total value of $ 1.65 billion. The transaction ended 13 November 20061.
Most of the videos on the site can be viewed by all users, while only registered individuals can send

36
unlimited videos. When someone watches a video, other videos related to that proposed to it viewed
the right screen in a scrolling bar, thanks to the title and labels. After a year of existence, new
features have emerged as the ability to post videos in response to viewing videos and also the ability
to subscribe to receive news on a particular topic.

37
38
L’espace
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=_ajkPBl2LMM&feature=related
(dessin anime 10 :22 – travail a la maison)

39
Les planetes
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=V2TxvZaaosQ&feature=related (01 : 28)
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=YL4cFjmnQT8&feature=related (2 :21)

Jour, Nuit, Saisons

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=aftUjJswvaw&feature=related (2 :20)

Jour et nuit dans 4 parts du monde

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs3xcIRk08w&feature=related (2 :16)

La Terre

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=eIUqbBD23Fg&feature=related (04:42)

Les Continents

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=oGXZPLipAGk (00 :29)

Europe

Les Capitales
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-Ua0GPpkxI&session=9G-
oSfYOtLoemWQFufHM8RCfPsbgAsyYdFn-yrwHHJeap64VuC1LD-
MkXAq2jytGTSlUtZGqiHIVr8A8FYSvo-
f0lV8mI_BU7CPdK7bLH11g9kQhZTXQq50grSYPP47cTejfnCokU-
Y2cC8RzJJXcqZHZhE_1Y96hBasI6lrpU0OJC6csdtBqVhpcTS1YTHGjOU_wIPQQ9MjEmA
zlloWRJLr8VbnFQrhR3Y3K63MZC_IGnR4pfij6cM4mA2zw4mP (2 :55)

Symboles d’ Europe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdkXd5IopBY&feature=related (02 :07)

Union Europeene (drapeaux)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ9lhoo8fZo&feature=related (05:14)

Service video de CE
http://fr.youtube.com/eutubefr

Voyage en France
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-
5052323998913441730&total=50&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=8
(34 :00) minutes

Paris
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-459400175855544143 (06 :23)

40
Le Louvre
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7366874085808160771 (2 :37)

Webcams dans PARIS

http://www.orange.fr/bin/frame.cgi?u=http
%3A//paris.ville.orange.fr/cgi/direct_webcam_tourisme.php%3Fid%3Dp4

Francophonie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjSOjB53gBw&feature=related (9 :18)

EDMODO

WEEBLY

41
42
BLOGGER

43
44
VRML

Walk in a land…
I’ll start to present you the space dedicated to French Language.

First of all Teleport! And here I’am!

By error I have no hair, but, it’s me, be sure:))

After passing the Gate and executing some Forward, Circle left, Go straight, Circle around left….I
could discover the second place of the land

45
Eh, as you could see, I have put also the Moving Commands, because, I’m sure that for everyone
who’s new it’s difficult to “walk”.

And I decided to discover more:)

Surely the reasearch in links continues:))

It’s absolutely amazing how many ressources we could find to learn!

Now, comes the teachers turn:)

46
Even detailled:

Yes, it could be hard, but it’s very interesting, it is OTHER thing.

Catalina Nicolin
23 November 2010

Toulouse Lautrec

47
LikeShow More Reactions
CommentShare
Seen by 5
1Azeddine Mohamed Ben Ali

Comments

Write a comment...

Catalina Nicolin
23 November 2010

Place of french artists: Renoir, Cezanne, Henry de Toulouse Lautrec,

48
LikeShow More Reactions
CommentShare
Seen by 5

Comments
View 2 more comments

Catalina Nicolin 2. Salon des Refuses http://arts.jrank.org/.../13822/Salon-des-Refus%C3%A9s.html

23 November 2010 at 16:15 · Like

Catalina Nicolin 2. Personnality connected: Napoleon III

23 November 2010 at 16:16 · Like

Catalina Nicolin 3. Salon des Independants http://arts.jrank.org/.../Salon-des-Ind

%C3%A9pendants.html
23 November 2010 at 16:17 · Like

Catalina Nicolin
23 November 2010

Personalities of Montmartre

49
Catalina Nicolin Henry de Toulouse Lautrec - his name and his works are connected with Moulin
Rouge et Moulin de la Galette
23 November 2010 at 15:57 · Like

Catalina Nicolin Link: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_de_Toulouse-Lautrec

23 November 2010 at 15:57 · Like

Catalina Nicolin
23 November 2010

The Montmartre center of French Culture

50
LikeShow More Reactions
CommentShare
Seen by 5

Comments

Catalina Nicolin In this space you could see that there are places to sit, that means the fact you can
develop your classes in there.
23 November 2010 at 15:16 · Like

Catalina Nicolin Link: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montmartre

23 November 2010 at 15:16 · Like

Write a comment...

Catalina Nicolin

51
23 November 2010

Childs Litterature

LikeShow More Reactions

CommentShare
Seen by 5

Comments

Catalina Nicolin About author: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Renard

23 November 2010 at 14:58 · Like

Catalina Nicolin The book: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4559 (with download)

23 November 2010 at 15:11 · Like

Write a comment...

52
Catalina Nicolin
23 November 2010

Montmartre - Moulin de la Galette

LikeShow More Reactions

CommentShare
Seen by 5

Comments

Catalina Nicolin Link: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moulin_de_la_Galette

23 November 2010 at 14:55 · Like

Write a comment...

53
Catalina Nicolin
23 November 2010

The gate of Paris 1900. I want you to observe that before entering you have an ethic code to respect.
This means "Ethic access in the on-line space"

LikeShow More Reactions

CommentShare
Seen by 5

Comments

Catalina Nicolin Links: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moulin_Rouge

23 November 2010 at 14:52 · Like

Write a comment...

54
Catalina Nicolin
23 November 2010

Paintings of this time

LikeShow More Reactions

CommentShare
Seen by 5

Comments

Write a comment...

Catalina Nicolin

55
23 November 2010

One of great figures of this time, who appears also figured in Lautrec's paintings about Moulin
Rouge, Aristide Bruant.

LikeShow More Reactions

CommentShare
Seen by 5

Comments

Write a comment...

Catalina Nicolin
23 November 2010

Entering the Moulin Rouge space.

56
LikeShow More Reactions
CommentShare
Seen by 5

Comments

Write a comment...

Catalina Nicolin
23 November 2010

My avatar Karina Lazuli in the world of Edunation I, preparing to teleport to the Paris 1900 world

57
LikeShow More Reactions
CommentShare
Seen by 5

Comments

Write a comment...

Catalina Nicolin
23 November 2010

Here you could see the page from Second Life web site who shows you a presentation and the
possibility to visit (if you have account) or to join (and to make account and avatar)

58
LikeShow More Reactions
CommentShare
Seen by 5

Comments

Write a comment...

Catalina Nicolin
23 November 2010

Difficult to choose the language here. I think that for the moment english "va mieux".
Why this group? Because I have not found any mention in English or French about this topic.
And here, I speak about "LA FRANCE" et la civilisation francaise, because about langue and ICT in
French is full.
I have searched by curiosity "Paris in Second Life" with Google. And I have found some places from
Paris and France.
The first world that I found is Paris 1900.
Sincerely, it is a wonderful space in time, and here we could explore the plenty of it.

59
In Images section, I'll put the prints took, and in the space where I could put text, I'll go to explore the
ressources.

60