MindMeister (Julie Magadan)

Interested in creating collaborative mind maps?  MindMeister is an online tool that can be used to create shared mind maps - all you need is a browser and Internet access.  In brainstorming mode, fellow MindMeisters from around the world (or just in different rooms) can simultaneously work on the same mind map and see each other's changes as they happen. Changes are saved automatically, but you can revert to prior versions of the mind map. 

You can use MindMeister for free with one limitation - you can only have 3 maps stored in your account at one time.  Others can invite you to participate in more mind maps, but they will be notified that you have reached your account maximum. If you want to store more mind maps, you can purchase a Premium account for $50/year.

Here is a sample MindMeister map!

Here is a short video on MindMeister's features and functionality.

PollEverywhere (Julie Magadan)

Why is PollEverywhere a favorite polling tool? Because the students can text in their responses from their cellphones, enter a response via a web browser on a smartphone or on a desktop. No more response systems, with their added hardware and software, necessary for the classroom!  A poll can be posted to a user's Twitter stream using the newly added Twitter integration. Very millennial . . .

You can use PollEverywhere for free, but there are certain limitations. With the basic account:

• You can have at most 30 respondents.  Some classes have more students; you may wish to upgrade to the $15 per month plan to have 50 respondents.
• You don't get individualized data. This is OK if you want to assess the general level of understanding of the class, but if you want specific results for each respondent, you'll want to upgrade.

   

Reference sheet: How to Create a Poll in Polleverywhere

Reference sheet: How to Customize Your Polleverywhere Poll

Participate in our web poll now: http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/LTk5MjE4NzUyMQ/web.  

Participate in our live poll via text message:

You might want to look at this short video on creating a new poll in PollEverywhere.

Screencasting with Jing or Screen Jelly (Carolyn Miller & Mary McGlasson)

First of all, what's a "screencast"? A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration (Wikipedia). 

While there are many screencasting products, we're going to show you a couple of free and easy tools.

Pros & Cons of Jing vs. ScreenJelly!

• Sample Jing video
• Sample ScreenJelly video:

• Reference sheet: How to Embed your Jing video in Blackboard.
• Reference sheet: How to Embed your Screenjelly video in Blackboard.

Wordle/tag crowd (Mary McGlasson)

Either of these tools will allow you to convert text -- either from a webpage, as a file, or entered on the spot -- into a word cloud. For example, here is wordle's version of my del.icio.us bookmarks:

And here is a different example - I compiled comments from my youtube channel and pasted the text into TagCrowd:

As you can see from these samples, Wordle produces a much 'prettier' (and customizable) word cloud. HOWEVER, Wordle also requires your Java to be updated on your computer, and I have run into problems more than once in a presentation at another location where the Java was not up-to-date. On those occasions I was able to go back to TagCrowd with no problem.

Storybird (Mary McGlasson)

Storybird is a collaborative storytelling site - you and your collaborators create a story together, using illustrations provided by Storybird.

Interested in other cool Web 2.0 tools? Visit the rest of this site (explore the Web2.0 Series pages.  You might also be interested in this other MindMeister map about collaborative online tools.