BP5_2009_Web 2.0 Tools Review 1

Full Sail University is asking grad students to explore Web 2.0 tools to expand our base of tools for use in the classroom. There are lots of great tools for classroom use, and so long as you have the technology to share or display said tools, exploring to find the tools can be a fun and exciting adventure. Using the tools is an exciting prospect, so I'd like to share some of my findings in several blogs.

One of the first tools I found is Etherpad, a free resource which allows the user to write to the document and invite other users who can also collaborate on the document as well. There are other similar resources in existence, like Google Docs, which allow users to make changes and collaborate in real time. Etherpad is a text pad that is synchronized, which means users can work together and each contribute to the document. An email invite is all that is needed to share the document with other users. An export of the document can be done in Word, PDF, Open Document, and additional options. There's even a chat feature within the document for additional collaboration.

The nice thing about this tool is that you don't have to sign up to use it, like Google Docs. You can view the document without creating an account.

Tools like Etherpad and Google Docs are great because groups or teams can use them to write into documents and have the changes saved in real time. So team members and groups can achieve goals together even when they’re not in the same space. Full Sail students use Google Docs to work on group projects together, but separately. Students can work together in different states or in different countries, for that matter. That’s the great thing about this technology. We’ve all gotten used to technologies because they are introduced over time and we have time to become accustomed to them, but years ago, society would have been extremely excited about such technology. In recognizing that this technology did not exist just a short span of years ago, we can get excited about it again. Web 2.0 tools are so very cool!