Getting started with MyMileMarker is as simple as creating an account (OpenID support) and listing each vehicle that want to track. MyMileMarker then creates individual pages for each vehicle where you can log your mileage and view your history. You are also able to record your mileage on a mobile phone using MyMileMarkers mobile friendly website or Twitter, enabling you to access your account from any location. Adding a record with the mobile interface works much like the browser-based version, but if you are a Twitter user, you can very quickly log your mileage by sending a one-line Twitter message. Just add the official MyMileMarker Twitter user as a friend and send a direct message in the format, “D mymm [miles] [gallons] [price]“, and MyMileMarker will handle the rest – even make a guess at which car you filled up based on the mileage you entered.

When adding an entry, MyMileMarker requires that you fill in your vehicles current mileage, the amount of fuel you filled it up with, and the cost of fuel per gallon. There are also a few optional questions that MyMileMarker asks so it knows when you last changed your oil and filled your tank. Furthermore, MyMileMarker is location based, so when filling in your information, it will either ask for either miles and gallons or kilometers and liters depending on where you’re from. You can pick your location in the account settings area. Lastly, be sure the information you enter is correct the first time because you can only remove the latest record from your history. In other words, if you make a mistake three records back, you will have to remove the last three records and add them back again just to correct the one entry. (Feature request: edit past entries!)

After logging your mileage a few times, MyMileMarker will begin to show graphs and make projections based on the mileage and fuel costs that you have entered. It will try and project the amount of miles your car will have and how much you may spend by the end of the year (or any set date). It will also show line graphs plotting your miles per gallon (MPG) and total vehicle miles helping you learn about your fuel economy. Additionally, MyMileMarker estimates your vehicles overall MPG and allows you to view your entire vehicle history. Sadly, I could not find any method of exporting my vehicles history.

MyMileMarker is off to a good start. What I like most is that you only record your mileage after filling up your vehicle, unlike many services which have you record your mileage every time you drive. It’s also nice being able to log your mileage from anywhere using a mobile phone. Additionally, I found MyMileMarker’s projections of year end costs and mileage to be useful and a real eye-opener. There are a few things that I don’t like though. For starters, there’s no way of importing or exporting your vehicles history. It would save a lot of time if you could import a spreadsheet or some kind of CSV (comma separated values) file. Also, you can’t edit past entries and fixing a mistake involves deleting old records and adding them over again. Otherwise, I like MyMileMarker for its simplicity and accessibility and plan to continue using it.

Pownce comes in two flavors: Web and Adobe AIR application. We’ll take a look at both, but you’re free to use whichever one you’d like. The web interface has a similar structure to Twitter. You will find a list of all your friends on the left, a form in the middle for posting messages, and past messages right below the form. There’s also a list of filtering options on the right so you can narrow down on message type, messages in reply to you, and messages that you have sent. You can also find a settings area in which users can customize their profile with a custom blurb, a profile photo, and theme. (Four preset themes to choose from)

The stream of messages on your main profile page consists of public messages, private messages, and replies. Each message is formatted differently depending on its message type and shows additional information like how many replies have been made and who else can see the message. You can also navigate into an individual message to create a reply, rate the message, and view other replies from other Pownce users. You will also find a handy forwarding feature that lets you pass any message you come across to your own friends. And don’t forget about advertisements. Pownce offers a pro plan for $20/year which disables advertisements, but if you’re not pro, expect to find advertisements appear in the form of specially styled messages. To be honest, I wonder why Twitter hasn’t done the same because they really aren’t all that obtrusive.

Sending a message is very simple and can be done in either the web interface or Pownce application. As of now, users can send messages in the form of text, links, files, and events. Clicking on a message type that you want to send will dynamically change the form with the appropriate fields. For example, sending a link will let you fill in an address with a description; file lets you choose a file and write a description (also has a nice progress bar show as you upload); and when adding an event, you can fill in the what, when and where with a message. Unfortunately, you can only upload one file at a time (unless you make your own zip file) and you are limited to 10MB if you don’t have a pro account (pro can upload 100MB files).

Now let’s take a look at Pownce’s Adobe AIR based application. As mentioned earlier, Pownce lets you use either the web interface or Pownce AIR app, but you only get a small fraction of the features in the AIR app. You can add messages and view messages and that’s about it. The only real benefit of using the AIR app at this point is that it’s easier to keep open than a browser and you can quickly keep track of messages and add messages. Another thing I like is how each message is displayed in a collapsed format only to show the full message when you click it. This makes it easier to look through your list of messages and removes clutter. Otherwise, I found the application to be a little buggy at times (explains the alpha status). For instance, when using the scroll wheel, it would sometimes scroll in the opposite direction I would tell it. Also, when you add a friend, you have to quit the application and open it again for the drop down list of friends to update. Lastly, you see a flicker every time the list of most recent messages refreshes, which can be a bit distracting, but not a major issue.

To be honest, my first impression of Pownce was not good. During the first 30 minutes of testing, I thought to myself, “Did they really just hype up yet another twitter clone?” I was wrong. Pownce does feel like Twitter in many ways, but it’s much more structured and feature rich. Perhaps my favorite feature of Pownce is the ability to add replies to specific messages and then viewing all the replies in a threaded discussion. This becomes much more useful as you start having multiple private discussions and public discussions at the same time. I also found that messaging on Pownce just doesn’t feel the same as Twitter, which isn’t a bad thing. Twitter feels much more free-form where I can just say whatever is on my mind. But with Pownce, I feel I have to refrain from submitting multiple messages in a row and say something actually worth sharing.

Even though I’ve only had an account with Pownce since last night, I’m already finding it to be a great way to communicate with friends. It’s not too far off from your basic instant messenger, but the format in which messages are displayed and group messaging features makes it much more appealing. I can’t say I’d pay $20/year for it, but I must admit the pro badges look awfully nice. Unfortunately, Pownce is only accepting invitation-only registration at this time and I do not have any invites to hand out. You can find me on Pownce with the username, bbenzinger. Lastly, I owe thanks to Rafe Needleman for an invitation to Pownce. You can find his review of Pownce on Webware.

Signing up with L8r will allow you to have three pending emails at any time for free, but if you need to send any more than that, it will cost you. You can purchase 10 emails for $1.99, 200 emails for $9.99, and 1,000 emails for $24.99. When you run out, you’ll be switched back to the free plan. Now, you may be wondering, why pay for L8r when you can send emails in the future with a service like FutureMe for free? Paid users of L8r get more features like file attachments, the ability to send HTML email, unlimited pending emails, and SSL security. L8r will also get rid of that annoying “sent later with l8r” message at the bottom of your messages.

What I like about L8r is that you can create email drafts and view pending and sent email in the messages area just like you would a normal email client. The benefit of this is that you can keep record of sent mail and fix any mistakes you have made in a pending email before it gets sent out. L8r will also send you an email when a message cannot be delivered and put it in the “undelivered” tab. This way, if you sent a message to an email address that doesn’t exist or if someone’s mail server is down, you can find out what email didn’t make it and send again. Another feature is the ability to send an email to more than one person. You just separate multiple email addresses with a comma in the “to” field and L8r will send to each recipient.

Even though L8r isn’t anything all that new when compared to email reminders (except that it sends up to five years in the future), I think it’s a pretty neat service. I can see it being helpful for people that use reminders in their daily workflow and need more than basic text messages. You can have three pending emails at any time for free and get extras like HTML mail, attachments, and SSL when you pay for more. Something L8r may also want to consider is allowing users to send recurring messages to themselves for repeating tasks and personal goals. I also ran into a couple minor problems. First, when editing an email, the time did not offset properly from its original set time. Also, when trying to buy more email credits, L8r directed me to a PayPal checkout for Netherlands users and I couldn’t make a purchase. (Maybe not such a minor problem) Otherwise, everything ran well and future emails that I sent out arrived on average 2-3 minutes after my set time.

As a last note, another service similar to L8r and FutureMe is FutureMail which allows you to send email in the future as a note or reminder to yourself. FutureMail also has this neat concept of a “FutureMail Blog” where you get a public stream of your future messages and an RSS feed to share with friends.

If you’re looking for a financial application with all the usual Web 2.0 design elements, BudgetPulse may be the service for you. You’ve got your gradients and reflections, Ajax calls with every action, and of course, neat JavaScript slider effects. I can’t say I’m a fan of applications that over do it with Ajax, but enough about that and let’s get started. Logging in to BudgetPulse will direct you to the Dashboard showing a brief overview of your financial situation. You can see each of your accounts and their balances on the left as well as upcoming expenses and expense categories that are close to going over budget in the middle. BudgetPulse also aggregates financial news from top financial news sources like Google and Yahoo! which can help you plan your spending and budgets accordingly. You can also search through all of your transactions using the search form on the right column.

To get an account up and running, head over to the accounts area in the tracking section. You can add an account and set its opening balance, then start adding expenses, sources of income, and recurring payments like bills. BudgetPulse also allows you to make a money transfer from one account to another like real banking. Additionally, you can categorize each transaction you add to an account so BudgetPulse can later group the transactions and base them against your budget goals. Expect to type out the category every time you add a transaction though as BudgetPulse does not pre-populate your list of your categories for you.

As you’ve probably guessed, BudgetPulse helps you create and track budgets on the expenses your make. It groups up each expense by the categories you create and allows you to set a specific budget amount to an expense category. So, for example, if I were to add a couple transactions with the category, “entertainment”, BudgetPulse will show that category in the budgets area and allow me to set a budget amount to it. It will then display a simple bar that compares how much I have actually spent on entertainment and what I have budgeted. At default, it bases the data on a months time, but you can set a date range at the top.

After getting some data into BudgetPulse, you can view charts and summaries on your financial activity. The charts are especially useful because just seeing your expenses visually can be a real eye-opener and help you better plan for the future. There are three different charts: Expense allocation (pie chart), monthly expenses shown by day (line graph), and monthly expenses shown by month (bar graph). The BudgetPulse summary section allows you to view each transaction category and narrow down into each category showing totals of the last four months and the overall difference of your income and expenses.

With many other personal finance services out there, where does BudgetPulse stand? BudgetPulse offers a nice set of features, though I found the interface a bit clunky and ran into some small bugs here and there (mostly when submitting a form with invalid information or nothing at all). However, I did like the ability to quickly search through all of my transactions. I also liked the summary overview and the budgets area where you can assign budget amounts to specific categories of transactions. On the down side, you cannot export or import data, but that’s said to be in development for BudgetPulse’s public beta, along with other features like a calendar, mobile access, and SSL encryption. As it stands, I’m going to continue using my favorite money manager for the mac, Cha-Ching, but I am interested in seeing the public beta release of BudgetPulse. I have noticed some changes to BudgetPulse since I first started testing too, which is always a good sign.

In related news: check out Expensr, a social expense tracking application reviewed by Webware. Also keep an eye out for Mint, a personal finance service that’s been generating some buzz lately.

Before I continue, keep in mind that Curbly is not a word, but if I were to define it to put the site into context, it would be used as an adjective describing the curb appeal an environment has. For example; “Your home is looking very curbly!” or, “This room would be much curblier if it had a new sofa,” or even, “Solution Watch looks so curbly on your web browser!”

Signing up takes just a minute and you can join as a standard Curbly user or a Curbly Pro. With both account options being free, a standard Curbly user is typically a person who has interest in making their home curbly, where Curbly Pros are those who know what it takes to make your home curblier.

Every Curbly user has their own profiles where they can post photos, blog, and create clippings, which I will discuss in just a moment. Creating a profile is easy and it’s just a matter of filling in the blanks to make it personal. You can also customize the design of your profile to better reflect who you are. If you don’t have much experience with code, you can simply choose one of the three styles they provide. I went ahead and created my own style sheet seen in use on my Curbly profile. You will also find the standard, but necessary social networking features like friend lists, profile commenting, discussions, and ways of finding people.

One thing that makes Curbly a great place is that when you make a post on your blog, not only does it show up on your profile, but also on the main page of Curbly and in a topic page that relates to your post. Outside eyes immediately see your post and you can expect your moment of fame with a comment or two soon after posting.

There are three types of content you can publish. These include writing a blog post, posting photos for others to see, and posting clippings of things around the web that interest you. There are also five different sections users can view or contribute that make up Curbly:

How To: If you are looking for a DIY (Do It Yourself) project, you can find plenty of things to do here. From building a Spaceship Table to finding the recipe for a great tasting home office.

Inspiration: Whether it’s cardboard furniture or the most awesome home theatre in the world, you will find something that inspires you to make your home look curblier.

News: If you have been waiting desperately for a sale at your favorite stores or are waiting to hear what others think about Brovo’s Top Design show, you will find the latest news in this section.

Questions: For people like me who don’t have a clue how to do something to make your environment more curbly, ask the Cubly users. You can expect some great answers and advice from Curbly Pros and standard Curbly users. You can get help with things like decorating your living room or advice on how to bend plywood so you can create that skateboard half pipe in your room that you’ve been dreaming of since 10 years old.

Talk: Feel free to say anything on your mind in the Talk section. Want to discuss the Valentines Day Google logo or brag about finding a new home? This is the place to do it.

Writing a post is simple. It even has a WYSIWYG editor allowing you to style and format your content. At first, the lack of drafts and post previewing didn’t seem so crucial. However, after adding numerous photos, headlines, and video in one of my posts, I quickly realized the growing stress leading up to the save button. After clicking “Save”, I found that my post wasn’t formated the way I anticipated. Being that I am a graphic designer, I immediately panicked after seeing it on the main page, in my blog, and in the “How to” section. Thankfully there is a “Edit” link that I used multiple times after posting until it was at it’s intended perfection. Once posted, you begin to feel like Martha Stewart’s upcoming competition. Don’t be surprised if I turn into a interior design consultant after a year of posting on Curbly instead of reviewing start-ups here at Solution Watch… hypothetically speaking of course.

You will also find a feature on Curbly called “Clippings”. Clippings let you save images and links from around the web that you can display on your profile or website for others to see. Using the Curbly bookmarklet, you can go to any site that has an image you like, click the bookmarklet, and post about it within seconds. There is even a widget for your clippings that you can place on your own website for others to see. This is one feature I immediately got addicted to. I thoroughly enjoy posting my Clippings.

Overall, Curbly is a great community. I have met many neat Curbly users, although, it was difficult to find them without knowing where to look first (cough, cough), and once I found them, I wasn’t able to send them a private message (cough, cough). Otherwise, I found that Curbly has become the answer to many of my living space dreams and aspirations, not to mention the frequent Curbly contests that can better your chances of living that dream (this one being the latest).

Watch out Martha Stewart! I am Tim Benzinger and I have a profile on Curbly!

On top of viewing original documents online, Footnote encourages users to share their knowledge by uploading images, annotating documents and maintaining member pages. Users can also download any image on the site and add it to their account gallery. There is a catch, however. Not all images on the site can be viewed and downloaded for free. Respectably, Footnote is a resource for those who are serious about original documents and that are willing to pay either by member subscription ($9.99/month and $99.99/year) or a per download basis ($1.99/image). But if you’re like me and just want to take a look around, you can register for a basic membership (free) and view select documents from the National Archives as well as contribute to the site by uploading images, annotating documents and creating member pages.

To start things off, let’s take a look at the Original Documents section. This is where you can find featured titles and the latest titles of documents on Footnote. It is also where you will spend most of your time searching, viewing, annotating, downloading and sharing. Now let’s say you are looking for a specific set of documents. You can either select to browse all available titles or perform a basic search. Browsing titles, as seen in the screenshot above, works much like the file panel on a Mac. You select a title from the list and then drill down into each subtitle until you find your document. It’s a nice view if you’re wanting to simply view the database of images. But if you’re looking for something specific, such as a name, you can use the document search and find matches from basic descriptions and annotations.

Selecting an image from a title will bring you to the Footnote image viewer. Powered by Adobe Flash Player, the viewer allows you to zoom in, rotate, and drag around an image so you can easily explore every last detail of a document. It also uses a similar technology to Google Maps where the image is re-buffered each time you zoom in and out to maintaining a high quality output. You will also find a bar on the right side of the viewer where you can view information about the image as well as comment and browse document annotations. Additionally, users can save an image to their account gallery, download it, and print it out all within the viewer. (Note: The document in the screenshot above is of the Declaration of Independence. Cool, huh?)

Now let’s say you were viewing an image in the viewer and found something specific that you would want to point out, like a name. Rather than simply commenting about the occurrence, Footnote allows you to annotate it so others can easily spot the name and search upon it. Just click on “Add Annotation”, drag the box to where you want, and size it to what you are annotating. Then specify whether the annotation is of a person, date, place, or text and fill in the appropriate information. That’s all to it and now other viewers can find your annotation and better understand what they are looking at.

Footnote also provides members with what they call, Member Pages. Essentially, Member Pages are small websites on a specific topic which can be created by any member for free. Members can write freely about anything they find notable and can write in sections, which holds a similar form to a blog. Member pages can also receive comments from other Footnote members and include images as reference. Footnote suggest members use pages to: publish histories of people and events; create a notebook for ongoing research; and showcase original documents that they’ve found and want to share. For example, one member has created the page “HMS Titanic Timeline” which covers the events of the “unsinkable” ocean liner.

Overall, I found Footnote to be a great resource and development. I don’t have a high interest in history, but it was entertaining to look through documents that one can’t normally view without going to a historical museum. The ability to browse through millions of documents and zoom in to every last detail of an image is quite impressive. I also felt that the social features of adding comments, annotations, and member pages to Footnote is a great addition as it allows members to get involved with our history and share their knowledge. I suspect Footnote will be big with genealogists, educational systems, libraries and anyone with high interest in history.

Update: More on the launch of Footnote can be found at the developers blog, Hypergene MediaBlog. You can also view a detailed screencast of Footnote in action on Youtube.

Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 1
Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 2

Educational Blogging

Blogging has quickly become one of the most effective learning tools in education today. It introduces students with new methods of communicating, improving their writing, and helps motivate them to find their voice. Dare I say it even makes learning… fun? Educators generally blog about school news, philosophies, and class activities. On the other hand, students tend to write about current events, personal beliefs, and topics related to their education.

In blogging, there are no set standards, no boundaries, no restrictions confining you to conform your thoughts to any given set of rules and regulations. You don’t have to worry about getting points taken off for not using the default: 12 point font size, Times New Roman, with 1” margins. You can write freely, and at your own pace. Also, bloggers can gain an audience from their writing. Unlike a school paper, blog posts can recieve feedback from students, teachers, parents, and ultimately, anyone in the world. (gasp)

Things I’ve noticed with student blogs

I often found, and many teachers have noted this as well, that the students would publish to their school blogs even when not instructed to. Students really enjoy reaching out to the world and they are so motivated by it that they want to write even more. They would describe how their day was, what they learned in class, or even things they learned or read on the news that day. It’s amazing.

I also found that many students became so attached to their blogs that they made it a responsibility to keep consistent. When they found they have been lacking in posts or that they haven’t been instructed to post for class in in a while, they would often apologize and feel as though they deserted their readers. It’s pretty interesting, although expected, to see that kind of connection with students and their blogs.

Also, I see that many students refer to other posts by other students in their writing, but do not appear to take advantage of trackback or pingback functionality. I personally feel it is essential that all bloggers understand the use of trackback technology, especially in this scenario, as it makes for communication outside of normal commenting. Not only that, it feels very rewarding receiving a trackback. So, I want to explain briefly how it works and what it means. In simplistic terms, you make a pingback by linking to the post that you are referring to in your post. This will notify the writer of the blog, adding a pingback “comment” to their post automatically, in turn continuing conversation. This is a great way for students to communicate back and forth rather than only commenting. If they have something to say and feel it’s worth a post rather then a comment, pingback or trackback it.

Student Testimonials and Reflections

“Blogs are revolutionizing this country, and many people are completely oblivious to even what a blog is much less what it can. So thank you Mrs. Vicki for convincing me what a viable resource a blog can be. Thank you for not letting me be ignorant to something so revolutionary.” – kyli

“At the beginning of the year when we started blogs, I didn’t really feel like doing these, and I thought that they were just a waste of time, but I was WRONG! I have loved having these blogs and I learned a lot about writing, people, things happening with my friends, I met new people, I have learned ALOT about things going on in the world, and I learned that I can be free to write what I want, and I like how people would disagree with me, becasue it just encouraged me to write more.” – Xoxo-Hillaryy-xoxo

“I love my blog so much! I like writing in it, even if there isn’t anything to write about! Haha. When i get bored, my blog says ‘Ashley, come write in me.’ I’m just joking, but it gives me something to do. I am so happy that we are doing blogs this year!” – Ashley

“I love my blog so much I can write what I want when I want except when my mom or sister is on the computer. My favorite part about having a blog is that it can be due on a Sunday and you cannot forget it at home or at school. I also like how you can write on it even if it is not for homework. The thing I worry about with blogs is that its world wide and if I say something to offend them then they will get mad at me and I wont no why. Other wise I think blogs are a great idea.” – Joey Girl

“When I wasn’t in the weblog group I would still be writing one paragraph essay. Now I’m writing a page essay.” … “Weblogs are helping me a lot.” – Jhonathan

General Testimonials

“Never in 25 years of teaching have I seen a more powerful motivator for writing than blogs.” … “And that’s because of the audience. Writing is not just taped on the refrigerator and then put in the recycle bin. It’s out there for the world to see. Kids realize other people are reading what they write” – Mark Ahlness

“Even when they’re out sick, students work on their blogs.” – Carol Barsotti

“I’ve got 6th graders coming in during their lunch and after school to add articles to their blog and to respond to their classmates’ articles.” – Al Gonzalez

“The response has been tremendous. Students seem so much more willing to blog in their own space and time. They seem less inhibited and more enthusiastic.” – Beth Lynne Ritter-Guth

Where to Start

So, where do you start? As a first stop, I highly recommend reading SupportBlogging. It will explain what educational blogging is all about, what it means for students and educators, and how you can setup a blog. I also recommend Blogs for Learning which is a new site containing in-depth articles on educational blogging and fantastic screencast tutorials showing the ins and outs of various blogging platforms (including WordPress and Blogger). Be sure to look over the article, “Student Blogging – What You Should Know,” and the case study, “Rocking the Cyber Canoe: Blogging in English.”

For teachers and students, I suggest using edublogs.org for blogging as they provide you with a free, hosted WordPress blog, a Wiki powered by Wikispaces, and Yacapaca assessment tool from the Chalkface Project. Or if you prefer, you can install a copy of WordPress manually on your own server or register for a free and hosted WordPress account at WordPress.com.

Photo Sharing with Flickr

Flickr is a free photo sharing site which has made its way into education providing teachers and students with an easy way to upload and share photos on the web. Students can search for photos to help with research and projects and educators can upload photos for classes, school events, and so on. I can also see Flickr being used in photography classes allowing students to keep an organized collection of their work, share their photos with the world, and receive commentary from viewers and classmates. And who knows? Maybe all it takes is a comment or a couple views of a students work to inspire and motivate them in continuing with photography.

One feature to take advantage of is Flickr’s photo annotation, or note functionality. In short, it allows you to add boxes around specific parts of a photo which you can add notes to. For example, if something was hard to make out in the background of a photo, one could place a note around it to explain what it is. What’s more is that other users can annotate your own photos. Say you are a teacher and you uploaded an art piece that you want your students to critique. Have them browse to the art piece and add notes around parts they want to comment on. Some great examples of this are as followed:

Beth Harris of the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, has used Flickr with her art history course so students can label and discuss paintings online (example above). Similarly, Ewan McIntosh has uploaded the painting, “Ivory, Apes and Peacocks,” where users then labeled and discussed the art.

Alan Levine has also shown that you can use the notes tool to create what he calls, “hot-spot learning objects.” As an example, he created a volcano diagram with each type being a learning object on the photo. The example is a simple chart showing the explosiveness of an volcano. If you are to hover over one of the volcano’s, a Flickr note will appear containing more information about it. Alan has also annotated a photo showing some of the many uses of Flickr. Nice work!

Educational Podcasting

Podcasting is a powerful medium that many educators and students are beginning to pick up that not only delivers rich educational content, but enhances student/teacher communication. As I student, I could download educational content and take it around with me where ever I go. I could also download daily lessons and school news created by educators. Likewise, I can produce my own podcast and publish it for the teacher, classmates, and the world to hear.

Take Stanford University for example where they have created Stanford on iTunes U for their students. Students can navigate to this site to subscribe to the Stanford U podcast on iTunes and receive faculty lectures, interviews, music and sports automatically on their computer and iPod. This allows the university to easily communicate and update students on school related events and content. What’s also great is that anyone can open the page up on iTunes and listen, whether they are a student or not. Try it out and listen to some of the podcasts. There’s great content, especially in the “Technology Ventures” area of “Heard on Campus”, including speeches by Guy Kawasaki on entrepreneurship, Evan Williams of Odeo on podcasting, and more. (Note: Berkeley University also has Berkeley on iTunes U).

Apple also supports educational podcasting in multiple ways. For starters, anyone can access the Podcasts section in the iTunes Store and navigate to the educational category for free lessons and educational content. Secondly, schools interested in creating a podcast site similar to Staford University can apply for iTunes U where iTunes will work with you in making your own iTunes U (Note: I have no information regarding costs). Apple also provides a section called, Podcasting in Education, where you can learn more about podcasting, what it means for educators and students, and how you can create and manage them with Apple products.

For educators in K-12 education, I recommend looking over a great site called, “Podcasting in the Classroom”, created by Nathan Shelley. The website gives a brief introduction of podcasting and provides an overview of benefits to the students in creating podcasts. The site also provides educators with an example lesson plan where it instructs the students to get into groups to brainstorm, plan, and produce a student podcast on a specific subject.

DreamExtreme Podcast is an excellent podcast produced by, believe it or not, 6th graders! The student-produced podcast is by David Cosand’s Kennedy Elementary class of Medford, Oregon, and I must admit, it’s pretty impressive. Students plan and produce full podcasts covering class news, movie reviews, fashion, sports, and more. Another podcast that I’ve recently come across is Edupodder, produced by Steve Sloan. Edupodder has a nice mix of educational content, interviews, and student podcasts – the latest covering upcoming student podcast projects. Some of you may also be interested in an Edupodder Podcast with Robert Scoble speaking to a journalism class about the impact of blogging.

Wikipedia & Wikis

While researching about wikis in education, I came across a Wikipedia article for educators called, “Schools’ FAQ,” covering the ins and outs of Wikipedia and how schools can benefit using Wikipedia. The article led me to Wikipedia’s School and University Projects, which I found to be very interesting. In short, Wikipedia encourages teachers and professors to use Wikipedia in their classes providing students with hands on exercises involving editing and publishing content on Wikipedia. Wikipedia suggests that students participate in exercises such as working on existing or requested articles; linking orphaned articles to appropriate places; fixing spelling, factual, grammatical, and other errors in articles; and even translating articles from other languages. It’s a great idea and is beneficial to both the student and Wikipedia. Students can learn about the topic as well as improve on their writing while Wikipedia gains more content. Wikipedia even provides teachers with a syllabus boilerplate to hand out to their students. If you are a teacher, think about giving it a try with your class, maybe as a project. I feel it would be a very perceptible and comprehendible variation of learning. I will also add that these projects may be more suitable for college and university students rather than K-12 students.

Perhaps one of the most impressive cases of wiki use in education is the Westwood School Wiki. Vicki Davis and her students manage the wiki and use it for just about everything. Listening to an interview with Vicki and Adam Frey, I was able to grasp exactly how she and her students use wiki technology. One scenario presented was after teaching a lesson, her students would go to the class wiki and summarize the lesson, in turn making it easier to take in the information. Vicki also explained how her students work on notes collaboratively in the wiki before an exam to study. During this process they all add their notes, correcting what’s wrong, and review the wiki. Another example she gave was with introducing concepts and exploring class projects. She has the students research, add notes, organize information, and even add videos to their wikis so they end up with a mass of information about the topic (example project: Security and Privacy). Vicki stated during the interview, “Students really become content producers and not just receivers.” She makes a great point and it shows that allowing students to work hands on with a wiki really strengthens their learning experience. Being part and contributing to what you are learning is much more effective then simply taking it in.

I also came across this great question from a Vicki’s blog about Pluto no longer being a planet: “How long will it take for the Pluto decision to filter to the average classroom?” She then continues, “With information changing at an accelerated pace, I think the case for wiki-supplementation and wiki-publication can be made. This could ensure that more accurate information is included but could also make student’s heads spin as a chapter changes while they are studying it.” It’s a very interesting question and thinking back to my High School education, textbooks were dated as much as 6-10 years. Some even having my parents signatures in them! How long will it take for school systems to replace old books with new ones containing accurate information? It’s funny. I’ve come across multiple claims online where teachers tell students not to use Wikipedia because information may not be accurate when anyone can edit the information, but at the same time, the school may not even own up to date prints.

Video Sharing

To many school systems, video sharing sites are evil. They are blocked from students in an attempt to hide non-educational material and explicit content. Well I say, big mistake! I will admit, I have seen many hilarious, pointless, painful, and explicit videos on video sharing sites, but I can also say that I have learned a whole lot from them. Google Video offers some of the best educational videos you can find on the Internet. You can pull up their educational category and search for specific topics ; watch hour long NOVA videos (highly recommend – I’ve watched many of these during my free time); and even view captioned videos. Additionaly, YouTube offers a new service called YouTube College where students can join their college and share videos only with students from their college. On the down side, YouTube does not offer an educational category making it harder to find educational content. I also recommend giving VideoJug a try as a source of how-to videos. It has a great kids category containing fun science experiments and arts and crafts.

Video also appears to be the new PowerPoint for some educators. Jeff Utecht has taught his 7th grade students of Shanghai American School to produce and publish video presentations on YouTube for a class project. You can find the presentations in Jeff Utecht’s profile. I watched a couple of them and I’m very impressed. It sounds like the students were pretty excited, especially once they learned about YouTube’s audience. You can find more about the project and student reactions on Jeff’s blog.

James Madison University has also taken advantage of video sharing by using YouTube to deliver an orientation video for faculty teaching in technology classrooms. They created a video that shows educators how to operate the technology used in the classrooms including laptop connectors, projector screens, and the control system used to operate the projectors. You can watch the video and read the article about it on their technology website.

Web 2.0… Courses?

I never really thought about the possibility of there being a Web 2.0 course in college, but apparently it’s happening. IBM and The University of Arizona are teaming up to teach about Web 2.0 and Social Networking to give students skills in creating and managing online communities. What’s interesting is that it’s not just a presentation or learning event – it’s an actual full course! From what I understand, students from The University of Arizona will learn about Web 2.0 products and social networking from a business standpoint to give leadership, communication, and community-building skills.

One UA student in a Digg comment thread provided readers with the official course description from the university website:

“Online social networking and communities have become a big role in how organizations interact within themselves as well as with external partners. Developing a healthy community can lead to new business opportunities, improved customer relations, as well as improved communications to the world. Online social network sites already claim over 300 million members worldwide in public sites that are starting to turn into a new generation of b2b and b2c business collaboration and brokerage sites. This course investigates the technologies, methods and practices towards developing online communities, and how this knowledge and these skills are applied to businesses. The course will involve lectures facilitated by the instructor and corporate representatives. Also incorporated will be experiential exercises and skill development assignments”

The press release also states, “The class will culminate in a final project where each student from the class will work with their own separate group of students from Howenstine High School in Tucson, Arizona, to organize into many micro-communities.”

Sounds like a fun and informative class. And according to Torrentfreak, The Univeristy of Arizona will be the first to offer “Web 2.0 courses”. It will certainly open up a new world of technology to students. Great going, IBM! Sign me up!

School 2.0

School 2.0 is an interesting brainstorming tool designed for schools and communities to help envision the future of education. The tool is a diagram showing various possible scenarios or visions of the future with example student, teacher, and parent conversations, class room activities and technologies, and more. The School 2.0 site states, “While School 2.0 depicts a variety of educational and management scenarios that utilize technology, the examples, information and ideas included are designed to serve as prompts for discussion and should not be construed as a recommendation of any particular technology or scenario.”

“Can you IM that to the virtual whiteboard?”, says a teacher. A parent talks to his child, “I looked at your grades online today. You really aced that test!” “There’s a virtual frog dissection going on now,” one student said to another holding a mobile device.

It’s an amazing vision. Can “School 2.0” actually happen? Maybe not all of it, but perhaps some elements. For example: viewing student progress reports online, submitting permission slips online, and receiving class documents and files from anywhere. I can’t imagine “School 2.0” happening in the next couple years, but the possibility is there and it’s nice to see a brainstorm tool such as the School 2.0 project.

More Cases of Web 2.0 in Education:

Google Docs, formerly Writely, has quickly jumped into the educational field actings as a free and collaborative alternative to Microsoft Word. Mostly used by K-12 Education (from what my research shows me), I assume it’s just not ready for college or university scenarios where page structure has stricter guidelines. However, feedback from students show that although they like Writely (now Google Docs), they find more use in Microsoft Word because they know how to use it better. They then continue by saying that in time, they will likely prefer Writely because it can be accessed from anywhere with an Internet connection and can be worked on collaboratively.

Feed Readers and RSS are slowly making its way into education teaching students the methods of subscription and publication. I found that most schools that take advantage of educational blogging briefly teach about RSS so students and teachers can more easily keep track of school updates and postings. It also appears that Bloglines is the feed reader of choice (PDF by Will Richardson) for many educators, mainly due to it being accessible anywhere. However, some educators are beginning to notice other options that are simpler and more useful for students, such as the personalized homepage, Netvibes. “I used to teach bloglines, however this summer, I began to use NetVibes. It is just easier for beginners to understand,” said Vicki Davis of Cool Cat Teacher Blog.

It may sound odd, but some students are now learning in their SecondLife. Harvard Law School has recently started a new course called, CyberOne, where students actually log into their SecondLife account and learn in the massively popular virtual world. The CyberOne course website states, “Enrollment to the Harvard Extension School is open to the public. Extension students will experience portions of the class through a virtual world, known as Second Life. Videos, discussions, lectures, and office hours will all take place on Berkman Island. Students from anywhere in the world will be able to interact with one another, in real time.” Sounds a little extreme to me! I will admit though, I am curious as to how it all works. For those of you interested, head over to the CyberOne website and watch this video trailer (YouTube) that can give you an idea of what to expect.

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There are a few office applications I have left out in this series. First, many would argue email applications are part of an office suite, and I agree to that, but I have not included a category for them in this post because most colleges and schools provide email to students as is. If I were to recommend one, I’d say Gmail for its features and offered space. I have also left out database applications as I don’t feel they are essential to a student unless they are majoring in computer science or related, in which case they would likely use Microsoft Access or a school DBMS (Database Management System) – not to mention that the Web 2.0 database applications are more geared towards a completely different ball park. Additionally, I have decided to leave out imaging and project management applications.

This article has three sections to it: “Office Applications,” “Web-based Word Processors Compared,” and “Are Web-based Office Applications Ready for Education?” Also, be sure to check out the comparison grid, or feature matrix, in the “Web-based Word Processors Compared” section.

Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 1
Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 3

Red Arrows indicate personal favorites with education in mind.
Products may appear more than once if related to multiple categories.

Part 2: Office Applications

Word Processing

• Writely: Online Word Processor allowing users to create and edit documents collaboratively online, import Word documents, publicly or privately share documents, publish to a blog, and more.
• Zoho Writer: Similar to Writely, Zoho Writer is an Online Word Processor where you can create, share, and collaborate on documents. Users can also publish to a blog, import and export documents, and make documents public.
• Writeboard: Writeboard is a collaborative writing tool where users can write, share, revise, and compare their documents online with others. It is not an advanced system featuring a WYSIWYG editor, Ajax, and flashy effects, but that’s what I like about it. Writeboard is a personal favorite of mine and as a matter of fact I am using it right now for this very post. It includes version control with text comparing and is great for essays and writeups of any kind. More on Writeboard.
• ThinkFree Write: ThinkFree Write is a free word processor that, at this time, is probably the closest you can get to an online version of Microsoft Office with features and appearance in mind. You can perform formatting options, create tables, add a header/footer, and spell check as you type just like your average desktop word processor. Pretty impressive. You can also open and save Microsoft Word and OpenOffice documents as well as share documents online with others. Note: There are two versions of ThinkFree Write: Quick Edit (Ajax-based) and Power Edit (Java-based).
• AjaxWrite: Lightweight word processor that can read and write Microsoft Word and other standard document formats, display multiple documents at once in tabs, and feature basic formatting. However, feature wise, it just does not cut it for me. What I do like about it is that it’s very quick and there are no signups – get in and get out.

Presentations

• Zoho Show: Web-based presentation tool to create, edit, publish, and show presentations. Zoho Show is very feature packed allowing users to create presentations full of text, images, shapes, lists, and pre-formated content templates. Users can also import their existing PowerPoint and OpenOffice presentations, view presentations online, and export as HTML.
• Thumbstacks: With Thumbstacks, create and share web-based presentations over the web. Thumbstacks provides a clean and easy to use presentation builder, although not as feature rich as Zoho Show, and allows users to export presentations in HTML format.
• SlideShare: Great new service, currently available by invitation only, that consists of an YouTube-like site for Powerpoint and OpenOffice presentations displaying presentations through Flash players. Users can even place the Flash presentation players on their own websites. I’ve been waiting for a site similar to this for some time now; perfect for students and educators wanting to store presentations online for sharing and receiving feedback.
• Empressr: Empressr is an Ajax and Flash-based service that lets you create and share presentations online. One advantage on the feature side is that it uses Flash and Ajax rather than HTML and Ajax allowing you to add more media then other tools including audio and video, although I personally prefer HTML presentations.
• ThinkFree Show: Excellent Java-based presentation application that feels much like Microsoft Powerpoint. Create rich presentations and play them through the online editor or by graphic. You can also save your presentations for viewing in Microsoft Powerpoint and share them with others online.

Diagrams and Mind Mapping

• Mayomi: Mayomi is a free flash-based mind mapping tool that lets you map out ideas, projects, research topics, or anything else that can be dug into. Great for students when it comes to writing essays. More on Mayomi.
• Gliffy: Draw and share diagrams online using Gliffy. You get all of your basic functionality that you would in an offline diagram application but with a few extra bonuses like working online collaboratively and dynamic publishing of diagrams. Create flow charts, floor plans, technical diagrams, and more.
• mxGraph: mxGraph is a very impressive JavaScript based diagramming library where users can create advanced diagrams within their browser. The only catch is that it is not a hosted solution where users can create and save diagrams. It is a library in which companies, and probably schools, can use under the mxGraph license. I’d love for it to be a hosted solution, like Gliffy.

Spreadsheets

• Google Spreadsheets: Create, store and share spreadsheets on the web. Includes real time editing and chatting with others as well as import and export options. Google Spreadsheets is my web-based spreadsheet application of choice, although on the negative side, it does not provide chart functionality.
• EditGrid: “An online spreadsheet featuring real-time-update and extensive collaboration features.” EditGrid has support for more then 500 functions, includes remote data update, access control, and more.
• iRows: Create and share spreadsheets online, create charts, include dynamic information, and upload and save Excel, CSV and OpenDocument files. More on iRows.
• Zoho Sheet: “Zoho Sheet is a web based alternative to traditional spreadsheet applications, like MS Excel or Openoffice Calc. It provides basic spreadsheet functionalities coupled with web based features like sharing, tagging, publishing and more.”
• Num Sum: Possibly the first web-based spreadsheet service launched that introduced social spreadsheets where users can tag their spreadsheets and share with others.
• ThinkFree Calc: Java-based spreadsheet application that has the look and feel of Microsoft Excel. Users can share their spreadsheets and work on them collaboratively online.
• Numbler: Simple online spreadsheet solution with great real-time editing and chatting with multiple users. Nice and clean interface although not as feature packed as some of the other options.

Calendars

• 30 Boxes: 30 Boxes is an online calendar that I feel works great for students due to its simplicity and sharing options. It also features RSS subscription to automatically populate the calendar with feed items on the day they were published – great for tracking teacher blogs and academic feeds. Furthermore, users can access their calendars on the go with 30 Boxes Mobile.
• Google Calendar: A bit on the advanced side, but once you get used to it, you’ll find it’s quite powerful. Users can create multiple calendars; view by day, week, or month; share their calendars with the web or a select few; subscribe to other shared calendars; and more. More on Google Calendar.
• Spongecell: “A free and easy to use calendar for you and your friends.” Features a simple drag and drop interface where events can be created and viewed on calendars in multiple formats. Users can also share their calendars with others.
• CalendarHub: CalendarHub offers a great service for personal and group use offering a simple drag and drop interface, calendar subscribing, reminder notification, and more. More on CalendarHub.

Miscellaneous

• Scanr: Scanr is an interesting product great for those without access to a scanner. Scan, copy and fax whiteboards, documents, and business cards with just a camera phone or digital camera! Great for research at the library and creating a backup of printed class handouts on the computer.
• eFax: Although this may not be that useful for students, I felt it’s worth mentioning. eFax lets users receive faxes through email for free simply by providing them with a temporary phone number that senders can use to send their documents. eFax is free for receiving faxes but will cost you to send them out (eFax Plans).
• Gmail: Generally, most colleges and schools provide email, but if you’re an High School student, chances are you weren’t given one. I’d personally recommend Gmail for its features and space, however you may have trouble using it in schools due to its chat functionality.
• Google Page Creator: Users can create quality sites without learning HTML or any other technical knowledge, although they can use them if they wish. You get 100MB of space for yoursite.googlepages.com and can upload files and attach gadgets to your pages. Here’s an example site I created in just a minute with Part 1 of this series. Dead simple, but presentable.
• Zoho Creator: Can’t find a product that does what you want? Try creating your own. Zoho Creator allows its users to structure a database, insert and connect data, and publically share it with others.

Web-based Word Processors Compared

Throughout my educational career as a student, I know that the program I spent most of my time in was Microsoft Word. In college, every teacher requested that we type our assignments up and send them to their email address so they can “easily” download, review, and email back with changes. It’s a process, and it works, but with today’s technology and offerings, things can be much simpler. Imagine one location where students compose and publish papers accessible online and a place where teachers can collaborate with their students without the need to download or email a single document.

After compiling a list of online word processors for this series, I decided to seperately research each one to find if they are ready for educational use. I realize that services like Writely are excellent for users like me, using it to compose and collaborate on documents for Parallel (my company), but what about students when it comes to assignments that are required to follow certain formatting? Can these web-based word processors handle it?

Time to put web-based word processors to the test! First, I created an account over at Competitious to easily list common word processor features and view a comparison grid displaying features from each product. I then went through features of Writely, Zoho Writer, AjaxWrite, and ThinkFree Write (Online). After viewing the results, it was clear which were capable of following common writing and paper guidelines.

Page & Text Formatting

Student papers don’t require too much formatting, but there are guidelines and structures to be followed – for example, MLA Formatting on research papers. Will we be using web-based products to work on these kind of papers? I can’t say, but I would imagine that we would need to if there are hopes for entire web office suites in the future. During my High School and College career, I’ve had to change document margins, add headers and footers, double space sentences (or often 1.5 space), and enable page numbering. Are web-based word processors capable of such formatting? To find out, I have tested each one looking for text formatting options and page formatting options. Can users bold text, add paragraph styles (Heading 1, Paragraph, Blockquote), double space lines, make page breaks, and add page numbers to the header of each page?

Writely and Zoho Writer are similar in that they offer all of your basic text formatting options, including: bold, italic, paragraph styles (Normal, Heading, Paragraph), and line spacing, but lacked when it came to page formatting only allowing for page breaks. AjaxWrite fell behind when it came to paragraph styling, line spacing, and document formating. Lastly, ThinkFree passed with flying colors featuring text formatting options and page formatting options. It had margins, page breaks, page numbering, and even custom headers and footers. It’s practically Microsoft Word online in appearance and functionality.

Functionality

I want in a word processor, in terms of functionality, spell checking, copy & paste, undo & redo, find & replace, auto-save/backup, and at times, word count. These are functions that I use regularly when working on papers and I assume others as well. Fortunately, all the processors had these functions, except for Zoho Writer not having word count and AjaxLaunch without spell checking, backup options, or word count – didn’t even prompt me when “accidently” closing an unsaved document.

Collaborative Value and Sharing

One advantage is that these products are web based. You can access your documents anywhere at any time and work on them as you normally would. Being web-based also allows you to share documents with others and work on them collaboratively. Users can even work on documents together in real-time from different locations or even post to their blog.

Writely has five stars in this department making it very simple for anyone to publicly or privately share documents, tag documents, compare versions, add comments, subscribe to RSS, and best of all, collaborate in real-time. Zoho Writer had similar results, except I found it a little more confusing to use and had a rough time finding an RSS feed. AjaxWrite had no collaborative functionality or sharing options at all, though its purpose is to simply act as a word processor. Lastly, ThinkFree featured public sharing, tagging, version control, and commenting, but no real-time collaboration like Writely and Zoho.

Feature Matrix

Thanks to Competitious for their great service (expect a review soon), I was able to easily create and manage a Feature Matrix. Competitious does not offer exporting of the Feature Matrix at this time, but they have kindly allowed me to use it for this post.

The matrix covers formatting, document structure, functionality, document objects, collaboration, exporting, and importing. If you have any suggestions about this feature matrix, please feel free to pass it by me and I will change it. I tried to only include common features in word processors, so if you think something is missing that should be there, please let me know.

Summary

These applications are impressive, but not quite there yet. ThinkFree is the only one that was capable of producing an MLA formatted document with double spaced lines, 1-inch margins and headers with my last name and page number. The only problem I had with it though was the fact the interface was so similar to Microsoft Word (confusing and intimidating) and that is was Java-based. Writely on the other hand had an excellent interface that was very inviting with great collaborative features. Zoho Writer had similar results as Writely, but I found the interface to be a little confusing and I deeply missed the top menus you see in applications these days (File, Edit, View, Help, etc.) which made it harder to look for specific functionality. Finally, AjaxWrite did fair in my opinion, acting as a basic word processor but just didn’t cut it for me due to the lack of features.

Are Web-based Office Applications Ready for Education?

As you can tell by the compilation above, Web Office is nearing. But are these applications ready for any main-stream attention? Should we just drop the desktop counterparts and start using Web 2.0 (or Office 2.0) products? In my opinion, not yet, but we’re certainly getting closer to the possibility.

Who knows when it will happen? Maybe in a couple years, or maybe five. What I do know is that right now, web-based office products are on a roll with new enhancements week after week because of technology improving day after day. Not to mention, they’ve got some pretty convincing features to switch for already including collaborative editing, document sharing, online storage, and so on. Did I mention they’re free? At the same time, they lack some important functionality, such as: document formatting (margins, headers, footers, page numbering); adding sounds and video to presentations; and advanced spreadsheeting with charts and forms. Also keep in mind dependence on Internet connection and possible security issues.

All in all, I do not feel school systems or businesses should immediately jump on the Web 2.0 train, but I think it’s time they start considering it as an option and try some of the solutions it has to offer. Try some of the applications for a week or two and find if they work for you. If your a teacher, see if your class prefers writing in the friendly and social Writely, or the intimidating and feature packed Microsoft Word. Some teachers are already doing it (you will see real cases of this in Part 3 of the series). Why not you?

There are going to be three parts to the “Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0″ series: part one covering tools; part two covering office applications; and in part three, real cases of Web 2.0 used in classrooms around the world. I hope that this series becomes a valuable resource for students, teachers, and school administrators alike. On a last note, part two is almost complete and I expect to publish it within a day or two followed by part three shortly after.

Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 2
Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 3

Red Arrows indicate personal favorites with education in mind.
Products may appear more than once if related to multiple categories.

Part 1: Tools

Organizers

• Stu.dicio.us: Student organizer and social notetaking tool where students can create a schedule, track their grades, manage a to do list, store files for classes, and write public notes in an outline-like format. Stu.dicio.us also allows students to connect with friends and soon will include Facebook integration. More on Stu.dicio.us.
• Gradefix: Best described by Gradefix, “Gradefix intelligently organizes and prioritizes all of your homework so you are always on top of it.” Students that use Gradefix create a study schedule used to best spreadout and prioritize homework throughout the week in hopes to decrease stress and improve grades.
• Chalksite (Teachers): Chalksite is a system built for teachers, students, and parents providing teachers with an easy to use central point where they can communicate with students and parents, post assignments and grades, send messages, and manage a website for their courses. More on Chalksite.
• Engrade (Teachers): Similar to Chalksite, Engrade allows teachers to create an account and have direct communication with students and their parents. Teachers can manage student grades, track attendance, schedule upcoming homework, and provide students and parents progress reports.
• mynoteIT: (New release came out the other day) An online note taking tool for students including a WYSIWYG note editor, assignment reminders, grade management, to do lists, and more. Students can also share notes with friends and receive feedback through commenting on notes.
• Haiku LMS (Teachers): Haiku has yet to launch, but its feature set sounds promising making it worth mentioning. Haiku provides a system for teachers where they can create a public website for their classes, manage content, list assignments and announcements, track grades, and more. Sounds like a similar application to Chalksite.
• CollegeRuled: Academic organizer, class scheduler, and message board area for students. Students can either create a schedule or connect to their Facebook schedule with CollegeRuled and take notes and manage a to do list for each class. Note: I have not been able to test CollegeRuled as it requires an .edu email address.
• Backpack: Backpack is an all around great organizer including note taking, file storage, to do lists, a calendar, and more. An example use could be that students can create pages in their organizer for each class and manage notes on class discussions as well as upload related files and class documents.
• PocketMod: This isn’t really a “Web 2.0″ product, but I felt it’s worth mentioning. Pocketmod is a small tool for creating disposable paper organizers using print out templates covering just about anything from note paper to reference sheets. It’s perfect for students that prefer keeping organized on paper. Also, it’s just helpful to carry around with you for whenever you may need to jot some things down.
• JotSpot: JotSpot is a free wiki allowing users to create and share documents, spreadsheets, calendars, and more. It is my top pick for a wiki and provides a great set of features. Users can even install other applications from an application gallery to extend their wiki with project managers, to do lists, photo galleries, and other applications. It may be a little on the advanced side for students and teachers, but if your tech savvy, have at it.

Gradebooks

• Teacher! (Teachers): Teacher, formerly known as Teacherly, is an online grading tool for teachers where they can create classes, add students, and track grades for all assignments and test scores. I would imagine it would work out fine for students as well wanting to track their own grades in classes. Unfortunately, Teacher is not accepting new users at this time but you can signup to be notified when they do and check out a demo in the meantime.
• Stu.dicio.us: Built into the Stu.dicio.us organizer comes a very simple grade manager allowing students to assign grade categories (homework, quiz, tests, etc.) and grades to each of their classes.
• mynoteIT: Students with an mynoteIT account can login and access their classes where they can add grade sections and grades. What’s nice too is that unlike Stu.dicio.us, mynoteIT gives the student a clear look with letter grades rather then just percentages and averages.
• Chalksite (Teachers): Designed for teacher, student, and parent communication, Chalksite provides teachers with online gradebooks where they select their class and simply fill in grades for each assignment that they have sent to their students. Students and parents can then login to their account to view their grades.
• Engrade (Teachers): The Engrade online gradebook is built to be flexible to a teachers needs where they can add assignments, create weighted grading categories, customize grading scales (A, B, C, Pass, Fail, etc.), and more. Students and parents can also login and view their grade report.

For Teachers, Clubs, and Management

• Groupvine: A service designed to help bring group members together to keep track of events, tasks, and news. Great for students in clubs, professors teaching specific topics, and campus management. For a screencast, view Screeniac.
• Nuvvo: Teachers wanting to teach online can use Nuvvo providing them with their own online learning portal. Teachers can can add courses that anyone can find and enroll in as well as charge for the online courses. They can manage students, class curriculum, quizzes, and more importantly, learn pages (allowing for headings, text, files, images, and video) that their students will be reading throughout the course.
• Schoopy: Built to strengthen community communication, Schoopy provides a system in which teachers can manage participating teachers, students, and parents and send messages, ask questions, keep up with assignments and even take quizes. Communities/Schools also can create a public website making it easy for students and parents to keep up with recent updates.
• Tuggle: Tuggle, launching Fall 2006, is a web-based organization tool for student leaders to manage groups, online payments, bulk email and texting, and more.
• Chalksite: A web package developed for teachers to help create a class website and a central point of communication with students and parents. Manage class assignments, student grades, and even a public blog.
• Engrade: “Engrade is a free online gradebook that allows teachers to manage their classes online as well as post grades, assignments, attendance, and upcoming homework online for students and parents to see.”
• Haiku LMS: Haiku has yet to launch, but its feature set sounds promising making it worth mentioning. Haiku provides a system for teachers where they can create a public website for their classes, manage content, list assignments and announcements, track grades, and more. Sounds like a similar application to Chalksite.
• Zoho Challenge: Online test tool where you can easily create tests, send tests to candidates (students, in this case), and view results with visual reports and straight forward grading (pass or fail).

Mathematics

• Calcoolate: Calcoolate provides users with a simple calculator with advanced expression support, mathematic functions, and history for viewing past calculations.
• Calcr: Similar to Calcoolate, Calcr is a web-based calculator with mathematic expression and function support as well as history logging in a very minimalist design.
• Create a Graph: Create a Graph is a free tool by Students’ Classroom that aims to make it easy for students to create bar graphs, line graphs, area graphs, pie charts, and point graphs. Navigate through its easy to understand visual interface to add data and customize graphs.
• e-Tutor Graphing Calculator: Advanced web-based graphing calculator allowing students to enter one or more equations and view them with position/intersection indicators and zooming functionality.

Resume Building

• Emurse: Great service built for job hunters that want to create, send, and share a professional resume. Users can view their resume’s statistics, send out their resume via fax and ground mail, and receive a public or private web address. One of my favorite applications of the year. More on Emurse.
• hResume Creator: Helpful tool for the tech savvy crowd that want to create a Microformat compatible resume for their website. Simply fill out the hResume form covering basic resume information and retrieve an HTML file which you can use to copy-n-paste into your website. You can then style the resume as you wish with basic CSS if your not thrilled with the default appearance.
• Amiko: Amiko does not appear to work or be officially launched yet, but I have been keeping an eye on it for the last month or so and hope to try it out soon. It appears to be a service that allows users to create and manage an online resume although it’s feature set does not look all that promising compared to Emurse. Note: The signup form doesn’t seem to work for me and I’ve tried reporting it as a bug, but the bug form did not work either. I’ll keep my eye on it.

To Do’s and Note Taking

Note: I did not list all of the note taking solutions I am aware of as I’ve already made a roundup of 50 notetaking tools here at Solution Watch, but I will add a few new student specific ones that I have recently come across.

• 25 To Do Lists to Stay Productive: Solution Watch roundup of 25 web-based task managers that can be helpful for students wanting to keep track of homework and upcoming quizzes. Be sure to check visitor comments for more.
• Fifty Ways to Take Notes: Another Solution Watch roundup including over 50 ways to take notes using various web-based tools in seven categories.
• NoteMesh: Best described by NoteMesh, “There are plenty of notes services out there; NoteMesh is a different way of thinking about your notes. Collaborate with your classmates to create a unified set of notes for your class. It’s like Wikipedia for your notes.” Note: School email address required when registering.
• Notecentric: Notecentric is a new notetaking site designed to help university students have their notes wherever they are and easily share them with fellow classmates. You can add multiple classes to your account and save notes to them using a WYSIWYG editor. Note: School email address required when registering.
• NoteTango: Free and collaborative note sharing site, launched just days ago, that allows students to create and share notes online and search notes created by other students.

Learning and Research

• EasyBib: An “automatic bibliography composer” that lets users enter sources and fill out a simple forms to be given MLA style bibliographies. I’ve used this multiple times in the past for research papers.
• Ottobib: Similar to EasyBib, Ottobib is a simple bibliography tool that allows users to enter multiple ISBN numbers for books at a time and retrieve the bibliographies in MLA, APA, AMA, or Chicago/Turabian format.
• Nuvvo: Nuvvo offers a service where students can search for courses to enroll in online on any just about any topic. It’s a fun and easy way for students to learn and they can select from free or paid courses.
• Diigo: Social annotation and bookmarking service where users can bookmark sites and add highlights and notes to them. Great for research. In fact, I used Diigo to help organize bookmarks and notes for this post.
• Wizlite: “Wizlite allows you to highlight text (like on real paper) on any page on the Internet and share it with everybody (or just your friends).”
• Mindpicnic: Similar to Nuvvo, Mindpicnic offers a service where users can create courses and find and study interesting courses full of media, links, flash cards, and more.
• Answers.com: Excellent site for researching anything at all. Make a search and receive results from dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other information sources.
• Wikipedia: Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia under a Wiki platform that is written and maintained by volunteers. It has possibly grown to be todays largest reference site and encyclopedia on the Internet.
• Del.icio.us: Social bookmarking site where users can save bookmarks and organize them with tags. Users can also take advantage of their del.icio.us network allowing them to add friends to their account and keep track of bookmarks left by each friend.
• Zotero: Next-generation research tool for Firefox that is currently in private beta. With Zotero, users can capture citation information, store media and websites, take notes, and more all within their browser. Note: Zotero is in private beta and I have not had the chance to try it out and will keep my eye on it.
• Newsvine: I could have picked any ol’ news site for this post, but Newsvine is, in my opinion, the best news source for students. It’s a clean and friendly social news site containing articles from the Associated Press, ESPN, and New Scientist as well as user contributions. Students can browse the site comfortably, rate news articles, participate in article discussion, and even start their own news column where they can write and publish articles. More on Newsvine.

Media Sharing

• Youtube: YouTube has quickly grown to be one of the most popular websites on the Internet. I personally use it for entertainment, although you can find a great deal of educational videos as well as create an account to upload your own videos for free. Students can research the site (may come across inappropriate content here and there) and even create projects with video and share them on the web.
• Google Video: Similar to YouTube, Google Video allows users to search, upload, and share videos online for free. I’m a fan of YouTube, but Google comes on top when it comes to quality educational videos. Google Video even has an educational category providing hour long videos and caption/subtitled videos (new).
• Flickr: Explore, upload, and share photos online. Includes commenting and neat note functionality where users can add blocks of notes on the photos themselves for others to see.
• Eyespot: Neat site where users can actually create video mixes online and share them with others. You can add up to 100 clips or photos to a movie as well as add transition effects and video effects. Reminds me of videos I had to create back in High School for Graphic Communications class. More on Eyespot.

That about does it for part one of the series. If there are any services that you feel should be on this list, please comment and let us know about them! If you are interested in more services in any of the above categories, feel free to contact me as I have only mentioned ones that I personally felt were best for educational use. Also, I just want to make a last note that red arrows throughout the article indicate personal favorites of mine but do not mean they are the best options for you. I recommend looking at a category that you need improvement on and find what product will best fit your needs, then go from there. Hang tight for part two of the series and enjoy!

To start things off, Squirl provides you with a free account and a public address. The free account allows up to 200 items and three collections, and if you need more, you may upgrade to a plus plan providing 5,000 items with unlimited collections at $10 per year (price recently changed and used to be $24.95/yr). Once you’ve got an account setup, login to access your Squirl Home where you can view recent messages and comments from collectors, keep up with friends, and look at featured collections from other collectors in the Squirl community. You can also browse your collections on the right side of the site where you will find recent collections, additions, and tags that you have added.

Before I go on to creating collections and adding to a collection, let’s take a look at a collections so you have an idea of what can be accomplished. You will find basic information about the collection and collector on the left and see a list of items in the collection on the right. Collection items are nicely presented and can be viewed either as a list or matrix of images. You will also find that when in the list view, hovering over an item will popup a box, using Ajax, allowing you to learn more about the item. One thing I did not see when viewing a collection though is a list or cloud of tags. I feel this is an important feature to add as it makes it easier to find what you are looking for. We organize our collection items with tags, so why not use them? It would also be beneficial to list tags in the item popups helping viewers find related items.

One of Squirl’s strong points is with creating and managing collections. The way it works is simple and makes for a very flexible system. You start by creating your collection filling in a name and description as well as basic view and privacy options. Then select “Add Item” and pick one of Squirl’s 30 item categories from the list. Here is where the flexibility of the system kicks in. Depending on the category selected for your item, Squirl will bring up a page customized to fit your items needs. For example, selecting the category, “Movie,” will show that you can either search Amazon and instantly add the movie or manually enter the details in a form relating to movies requesting title, director, cast, and so on. Or say you selected the category, “Stamps.” Squirl will show a page allowing you to manually enter the stamp details asking for its name, catalog number, date issued, and more. I feel this is a great concept and it really makes adding items to your collections quick and painless.

On the social end, Squirl allows collectors to find and interact with other collectors and invite friends and family to view their profiles. I don’t feel Squirl’s aim was to become the next best social networking site, but it provides some basic functionality including adding of friends, sending messages to collectors, and commenting on collections. I can also browse through all collections, find a collector with similar interests, and add them as a friend so we can connect and discuss our hobby.

Overall, I had fun using Squirl and found it to be a great service for bringing collections to the web. Its system is quite flexible allowing collectors to add items of any kind to their account and being able to network with other collectors is a great way for friends and family to share. I felt the interface was a little confusing at times and lacked some features, such as tag clouds in collections, but nothing major. Also, Squirl is just a fun site to browse. I had a great time searching through all of the collections looking at rare stamps, autographs from famous people, and things of that nature.

If you’re interested, check out my Squirl profile where you can find my DVD collection that I’m working on (I know… boring, but that’s all I’ve got). I’d love to see your collections too if you have any.

More on Squirl at CNET and Postbubble.