I registered and within minutes had created my online classroom.  I was able to add documents from my desktop and annotate these.  Web-cams and microphones and chat were all present.

To add students to my classroom, I could invite students through email addresses.  They would be sent an invite and would need to register to access the lesson.  Once registered any scheduled ‘lessons’ appear in ‘My Session’.  Selecting a session and launching the session was all that was needed to get to the lesson – no software downloads, it was quick and simple.

I guess as with all these tools it really needs a thorough testing before I understand its potential - I need to try it out with half -a-dozen colleagues and see how it works.  My initial thoughts are that it is quick and easy to set-up, and no software to download makes it easy to use at home, in school or anywhere with wireless access.

Came across this on a blog and thought I’d see if I could embed my google map in my blog.

It promised to be simple to use, and I have to agree – it took very little effort to become familiar with the set up.

Click on the image below to link to the pages I created while exploring PBWiki.

First impressions, without having yet used it with students, is that it has a lot of potential in its use.

One of the key considerations before using a Wiki with students is introducing the culture of collaboration and the purposes behind using the Wiki. Simply providing the tools for students to collaborate doesn’t ensure that the collaboration is fruitful.

In class exercises on collaborative writing could be supportive in using an online collaboration tool. As with all of the tools and ideas with Web 2.0 they need to be introduced in a way that support realising their benefits. Lack of planning and support will quickly highlight that simply using web 2.0 tools does not in itself produce exciting learning activities.

Tecahers in using wikis need to emphasis the product and outcomes of using the technology, not the technology in itself. Wikis are not used to collaborate, they are used to collaborate to produce something – and it is the something that is of value, not that it is a wiki.

No problems adding the widget – it was simply a copy and paste following the instructions provided.

Box.net provide 1Gb of free online traffic and 10Gb of traffic a month.  It’s a neat way to add several document to a blog without using up space.

Currently in the widget is a document reviewing free online storage – something I did for work.  I was suprised how much space I could get for free – about 35Gb for 30 minutes searching!

Whilst spending a pleasant Sunday in the garden enjoying the weather and surfing the Internet, I came across this free poll tool.

It was easy enough to set up my poll and responses – click on the polldaddy logo above to access my poll.

Polldaddy instructions indicate that pasting in the html for my poll should allow the poll to appear in my blog.  I tried this a few times, even using the flash embed, however I couldn’t get this to work successfully.

For the time being I am happy to create a link from my blog to the poll.

The Democracy plug-in for Wordpress is easier to use in a blog, but the Polldaddy poll creator would be easier to use in other contexts.

Polldaddy would be a useful tool for students to create their own polls.  There are plenty of polling tools so it would be unlikely that schools or teachers would want to use Polldaddy.

It is straight forward to use and would allow students to easily create a poll.  A link could be added to a discussion board or emailed to fellow students.  Being web-based removes issues of software to create a poll for students.

Polldaddy has a custom style option using CSS.  This would allow those with an understanding of cascading style sheets to create a poll with the same look as their website.

Many learning platforms provide online environments that offer the ability to create a poll.  Polldaddy is comparable in terms of outcomes and is as easy as the simplest to create a poll.

I have looked at Platial, Microsoft Live Maps and Mapsack and thought that these tool offer a great way to present information for students.  I was interested to see what Google Maps would offer and assess if this was the leader of the pack.

So, I’ve spent an hour this morning putting together my first map.  I am impressed with how easy it was.  I firstly created a Picasa Web Album to store the images I wanted to add to my map.  I then created My Map presenting my holiday photos from last Summer.  I guess if I was more adventurous I could I added some text to describe the pictures or added details about the history of the areas visited.

Creating the Picasa Web Album allowed me to easily add the images to my map.  Picasa We Album has a ‘Link to this Photo’ button that provides the html code to add to My Maps.  To add the html code I added a placemark and then pasted the html code in ‘Edit HTML’.

The Google My Maps help is very straight forward in explaining how to create a map.

This would be a create tool for students to use for a geography field trip, a local history project or any topic where geographical location was related to the infromation presented.

So after an hour this morning I was very impressed – this is my favourite mapping tool.  It was simple, straight forward and quick to create my map.

Video can be added in the same way as images were added from Picasa.  Selecting the embed html code from sites such as YouTube and Google Videos and adding this to a placemark is as easy as it is for a picture.

To add sounds I could a link to a file I had stored on Archive.org or a podcast I had created with software like Podium.  I could create a movie in PhotoStory or MovieMaker, add this to my OurMedia page and link this to my placemarker.

The easy of use and versatility, as well as the emphasis on creativity, would make it very appealing to students – well at least for the first dozen times students are asked to create a my map!