I came across three web 2.0 tools that have uses inside the education profession, but could just as easily be applied to other professional or personal applications as well.
Screencast-o-matic
As media has changed over the years, technology has provided ways for us to record our media in different ways. We had dual cassette players allowing us to record music and other voice recordings and then the VCR came along to help us record our televisions. Now, more and more of us are finding a need to record our computer screens. With that need and interest, we've seen a number of web resources come out to help us record our computer screens. I've used at least two other screen recording web tools, but I have now found my new favorite. Screencast-o-matic is a very user friendly intuitive recording tool. The free account, like other screen recording tools, allows for unlimited recordings at a lower video quality. One of the features I like about Screencast-o-matic is it allows for video's up to 15 minutes instead of 5 minutes like others I've used. As I tested this resource I also found a nice feature where the program creates a "halo" around where you click, giving your viewers a way to focus on a part of the screen you're showing off. While this technology has application in both personal and professional realms, I feel this could be an invaluable tool to teachers. Teachers could use this resource to record directions or notes to be posted in their Learning Management System (LMS). They could also record lessons using a variety of computer tools matched with their voice to deliver a consistent lesson to their students. This would be especially helpful to teachers who teach the same class multiple times per day. There wouldn't be the need to repeat themselves over and over. Once this video is created teachers then have the option of generating a link from within the screencast-o-matic site or posting it to YouTube or embedding into their own website.
As video becomes more embedded into the classroom, teachers will be selecting a screen recording resource that best suits their needs and as of now, I think screencast-o-matic does the best job.
Breezi
In our careers today we all have some presence on the internet, but not all of us have the ability to use complex software to create professional looking webpages. Teachers are definitely a part of this group and often times we find the need to create webpages for our personal lives or moonlighting opportunities. Breezi is a web 2.0 tool that creates very professional looking websites by simply making some design selections and this online tool does the rest. The site boasts the ability to create over 60 billion different combinations of webpage designs. Once you make some basic choices, Breezi provides three webpages to look at. Click on the design elements that you like and pass over the ones you don't and the site will narrow the search so that you get a website just right for you.This type of web 2.0 tool brings the option of having a professional looking webpage to all of us even if we don't have skills with software like Dreamweaver. This type of resource would be good to introduce to some students. As students reach the age where they are ready for more advanced computer work, the creation of these types of websites may be the first step in learning about how websites are designed and created.
JPEG Mini
Today's digital cameras are becoming better with each new device. Even our smartphones have incredibly powerful cameras built right into them. While this provides us all with stunning photography from devices that fit in our pocket, there is a downside....file size. Along with beautiful pictures comes images that are very large files. This fills up our hard drives, thumb drives, Dropbox accounts and makes our websites open more slowly. The web 2.0 tool JPEG Mini is a free resource and takes our original files and claims to make them 2x to 5x smaller.....without losing image quality! The picture I used to the right was reduced in size by more than 1/2 and yet the picture still looked great. As far as I can tell, the companies claim to reduce file size and maintain the quality of your image is accurate.
The process is as simple as uploading an image and then saving it as a new file on your computer or in your Flickr or Picasa account. This tool has a lot of application across the personal and professional landscape, but teachers especially could benefit from this tool. Most school districts have limited space on the district network they provide to teachers so reducing file size is not only a time saver, but also a money saver as well. Teachers with a website can also see improved performance of their website by faster load times of high quality images. Students could equally benefit from a tool like this now that they are using social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to share photo's. This site is very clean and easy to use and would benefit anyone who uses digital photography and has concerns with file size.
Don't forget to share
Periodically checking out web 2.0 sites like go2web20.com is a great way to pick up some new tools that could really benefit all of us in our personal and professional lives. Check out the site and start sharing with your friends, family and co-workers the next web 2.0 tool you discover.
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