Free Online Website Builders (WYSIWYG)

New technologies have made it easy for anyone to be a content author. The webmaster no longer has to be a highly specialized HTML coder. So, if you don’t have much experience in creating websites and need a What You See Is What You Get website creator, here is a list that might help:

 

Jimdo - great designs - no, this is not a martial art related website, it is a website builder that offers you  500MB of storage. Pretty reasonable space.    

Synthasite - you can even save your website to a folder on your computer to then upload to your student server for example.

Weebly - amazing looks!

Sampa - very easy to use.

New: Wix

and, of course, Google Pages.

Web 2.0 in Education

There is so much controversy over the term Web 2.0. Some people state that the digits “2.0″ determine a version, and that the Web is continuously evolving without need for a “label”. They claim that the assertion that Web 2.0 is more user-centered and interactive than Web 1.0 is not true. While new technologies (e.g. AJAX, a group of technologies that make possible for so-called Web 2.0 tools to be created) do mke teh Web more interactive, this interction and user-centered content generation was envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee since the beginning of the Wolrd Wide Web, not being a standard for this phaseof the Web only. https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2006-May/000399.html 

I do believe that the interaction made easy, the collaborative tools and the (normally) cleaner user interface of tools (visual literacy) make it possible for a more learner-centered learning approach mediate by these new tools. 
Vygotsky’s, Piage’s and other contructivist learning frameworks can be easily implemented online by means of the Read/Write Web. 

Resources such as “social bookmarking”, “social networks”, “group blogging”, “video/image/audio sharing”, wikis, tagging, and many other emerging tools enhance interaction on the Web. 

This interaction can bring more meaningful learning into place, learning that happens through social interaction, sharing of knowledge, etc. 

Web 2.0 tools you can try right now: 

create a social network on www.ning.com 
create a blog on www.wordpress.com 
create and share slideshows on www.slideshare.net 
create and share videos on www.youtube.com 
create and share a wiki on www.wetpaint.com 
create a microblog on www.twitter.com 
create microblogs for your classes on www.edmodo.com 
join Second Life on www.secondlife.com 

my blog on http://tweaklearning.wordpress.com 

If you don’t want to join anythign right now, just visit websites like these and you will see how much fun and interactive they can be… 

Educators should care about everything that helps their learners learn in meaningful ways… most teachers agree (or am I wrong) that learnign can be improved with social interaction (or am I wrong?). Research talks about informal learning being the means for most of our learning. Why not give it a try? These new Web tools matter to us because they matter to the learners. 

Web Conferencing Tools

So in reply to Ed Teng’s comment in my post with invites to A.Viary online production tools (if I understand him correctly) I will post some links and comments to webconferencing tools that might be useful for instructional purposes.

ePresence -> Free and open source tool. Has to be installed on your local server. Technical support is offered by the Open Source Consortium. Their webconferencing and webcasting applications are excellent and feature-rich. It is possible to record both webcasting (broadcasting an event, for instance) and make it available on your website. It is possible to record webconferencing (people interacting with a virtual whiteboard in a virtual room) and make it available as well.

 

DimDim -> Another open source initiative. You can host online meeting without installing any extra program, just go to their website, create a free account and you are up and running. DimDim allows you to schedule and invite anyone without requiring them to install any plugins. Maximum of 20 users in the free ad-supported version of the online web meeting program, but they offer room for up to 100 people for $495/year and an enterprise edition. You can also install locally and free of charge the DimDim Enterprise edition free of charge (it requires more technical know-how).

Elluminate -> Webconferencing tool with many features. Even though the “looks” are more old-fashioned, this program is very stable and well-accepted in the academic arena. They have good academic packages.

Yugma -> Feature-rich webconferencing tool that has a free version. Yugma offers other versions of their packages that allow you to invite more participants at a time. A plugin is required for participant to view the meeting room. An interesting differentiator for Yugma is that they offer a Skype plugin that works seamless with the famous VOIP client.

Vyew -> Web-based tool that has many important features in their free version. No plugins to download and plans that offer more flexibility and storage are also offered.

Open Source Social Network Engines

No-one is impressed with the words “social networking” anymore. We used to have to explain to new comers what “Myspace” or Facebook implied. Now everyone can have their own social networks online with relatively no cost using open source solutions that I think deserve some attention:

1- www.elgg.org -> free and open source initiative. Very customizable, still need som work done, doesn’t have many of the standard features you would expect from a social network. Large developer base might bring important improvements over time.

2- www.drupal.org -> not exactly built for social networking per se, but has an enormous plugin database that can bring extra functionality, including the possibility of creating Digg-like video/news/websites/etc. aggregator that requires votes by community members so content is published.

3- http://update.peopleaggregator.org -> Myspace-like social network engine. Integration with OpenID. Still pretty “rough”, but has potential. Demo: http://www.peepagg.net/

4- www.boonex.com/products/dolphin -> more focused on “dating” but allows for customization. Many plugins have to be “purchased”, though.

5- http://www.barnraiser.org -> I can’t tell you much about it (not many communities powered by “aroundme” right now). It is open source.

6- http://civicspacelabs.org -> Drupal as a social network. Has free options for non profit organizations.

7- http://appleseed.sourceforge.net -> not much information on the website and no demos available. Open source.

8- http://lovdbyless.com -> new open source social network engine that has a lot of potential. Ruby on Rails. Some nice features and integration with Youtube and Flikr out of the box.

9- isocial - http://sourceforge.net/projects/socialnetwork -> not much info.

10- clonesumating -> should be a clone of “consumating.com”, which has been down for quite a while now. Quite a few features.

11- ozcode - http://sourceforge.net/projects/ozcode -> an ozmozr.com clone. Lets you build networks around feeds and friends.

12- http://insoshi.org -> brand new, lots of work to be done. Good for simple networks.

Also, http://www.mahara.org -> not exactly “social networking”. Good ePortfolio with some social networking around it. I don’t understand why people pay for some ePortfolio providers out there (you know what I am talking about). Just an example of how open source and free (as in no money or credit card necessary) can offer great features that are comparable to commercial products.

Digital Divide 2.0

Everyone is talking about Web 2.0 and how everyone has a voice, even I have suggested that in blog posts, company training designs and school work (yes I am a graduate student wishing he were a Doctor already).

Something that has been bothering me though is the fact that “all this” technology does not seem to be available to everyone, really. I am not talking about a matter of having access to Facebook and choosing not to use it. What I am suggesting is the reality of “not everyone actually has access to these ‘amazing’ collaborative technologies” as they should.

This makes educational efforts that rely on Read/Write Web tools (even though there aren’t that many such initiatives) some sort of elitist efforts.

Some initiatives like the One Laptop Per Child project try to take technology to third world countries. The Brazilian government partnered with computer manufacturers to create a more accessible PC for the people called “Computador Popular” (or “People PC”) which gave my mother, 65, the opportunity to have her first computer which we use to stay in touch now. But it is still not enough. Not enough.

I pose this more as a question. How can we make collaborative Read/Write Web tools really accessible to more people(s) in the world, especially the under-privileged? Better yet, how can we make educational initiatives that use those technologies available to more people in the world? How can we make educators aware of the possibilities of such tools for Education (after granting them access to computers)?