New and Improved?... Tools for 2011!

1. Sticky Note it with Lino!

2. Museum Box

3. VuVox

4. Today's Meet

5. Corkboard

6. Tagul

Top Ten from 2010...What would you add to this list?

Step into the digital time machine and journey back to 2010, where our school was buzzing with the excitement of cutting-edge Web 2.0 tools that revolutionized our learning environment.

1. Imagination Cubed: Draw pictures with friends (anywhere). This is a great tool for anticipatory sets and closures.

2. Tagxedo: It is similar to wordle and imagechef, where you can create a word collage but with tagxedo you can add awesome images to bring more meaning to your collage.

This tagexdo was made to introduce our staff to our school community. Here is a tagexdo of one of our teacher's.

3. Wallwisher: A collaborative way to share thoughts with virtual sticky notes.

Our school community used this wallwisher to share our thoughts on hope after reading the book "Ruby's Hope".

4. Prezi: A presentation tool that uses a map that has multiple layers and interesting ways to layout text, image and video. It is a non-linear way to present information.

This prezi was made to deepen our understanding of the 7 Habits at our school. Grade 3 students then made their own prezi on the habits.

5. Glogster EDU: This is a virtual poster. You can add images, videos and graphics to present information.

This glog was made to introduce our computer club on our school wiki.

6. Domo-Animate: You can create mini movies with domo.

This is made by a Grade One student.

7. Tag Galaxy: You can find lots of great images on tag galaxy.

8. I moved from Delicious to Diigo this past year. I love the collaboration with research, the highlighting and sticky notes.

9. Twitter is definitely a favorite. This is a place where I reflect with my PLN on Web 2.0 and 21st Century Learning.

And one that I just discovered and will begin playing with to see how I will use it in the classroom is:

10. Museum Box: You can showcase images and present information in a unique, multi-layered way.

Look at this museum box on the inner planets:

Click a box and it takes you to a cube with information that a student has added:

Whew! That is a cool tool! I can't wait to try it with my class in the New Year.

What was your favorite 2.0 tool that you used this past year?

How does google really work?

I stumbled upon the concept of Googlebots some time ago and couldn't help but wonder if they truly enhance the efficiency of my searches.

To satisfy my curiosity, I turned to one of my favorite networks, YouTube, in search of answers. I came across a video that eloquently elucidated how the Google search engine operates. It delved into the realm of "spiders" or Google bots, which are dispatched to websites to gather data. One crucial piece of data they collect is the number of visitors to a site. Consequently, when you conduct a search, the sites that appear first are ranked by these bots based on their popularity, determined by the number of hits they've received.

Armed with this newfound knowledge, I realized there are certain "tricks of the trade" that one can employ to refine searches and yield more relevant results. It's imperative for students to master these techniques to enhance their research skills. They can utilize simple tricks like those discussed in the video, or delve deeper into the realm of "Google + operators," where they'll find cheat sheets and guides to fine-tune their searches. For instance, a quick search for "Google + operators" yielded invaluable tips and tricks to ensure my searches are precisely tailored to my needs.

Here are five quick tips to kickstart efficient searching:

1. Prefixing key words with "intext" narrows down searches to the main body of text.

2. Adding "inurl" limits searches to terms found within the URL (uniform resource locator - the web address). To view the last cached version of a webpage, simply add "cache" before the URL in the search.

3. Including "info:" in the search fetches only information on the subject.

4. To find sites with keywords in the title of a page, use "intitle:" or "allintitle."

5. To discover links to a specific webpage, employ "link:" before the URL in your search.

Let's not overlook the Google advanced feature!

Empowered with these techniques, students and educators alike can save time and unearth valuable information with ease. After all, knowing how to find information and understanding how it finds you is key to successful surfing!

Happy searching!