Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Last month I posted The Best Online Tools For Real-Time Collaboration. I was exploring those tools more for my own professional development and professional relationships since, because of time zone issues with our International Sister Classes Project, it seemed unlikely any real-time collaborative work was going to work with my students.

At some point, however, I can see how our classes might consider doing joint projects not in real time (I believe that type of relationship is also called asynchronous. However, if I can’t spell it or pronounce it without a dictionary I’m not going to use it!).

I using the word “Best” hesitantly. I suspect there are quite a few other online tools out there, and I haven’t experimented extensively with any of them. If you have some suggestions, I’d be happy to hear it and put out a revised version in the near future. That’s one reason I’m not going to be listing sites in any kind of ranked order.

In order to make it on this list, the web application had to meet a number of criteria. They had to…

1. …be free.

2. …be accessible to English Language Learners.

3. …have specific collaboration tools. Most Web 2.0 tools, of course, have collaboration potential if you just email your password to somebody else. In order to make this list, however, the online application had to have a specific “value-added” and simple process to invite and work with others to develop shared projects.

4. … not require any downloads.

A number of sites on the “real time collaboration” list are also useful for working together not in real time. Rather than share them again here, I’m going to suggest you just explore that list on your own.

Also, wikis are online tools that should probably be included on this list. However, I still have not gotten around to using them, and still don’t really know how. I’ve posted in the past, though, about some good resources sharing how to use them in the classroom. You can check them out if you’d like.

While you’re at it you might want to review all of my other “The Best…” lists.

Here is my very tentative and unfinished list of The Best Online Tools For Collaboration — NOT in Real Time:

Fliptrack has a “Friendship Slide Show” feature that lets you jointly create slideshows, including music, with friends and family.

WeBook is an interesting new site that lets you create a topic and then invite people to share stories around the same subject. It looks simple and seems like it might have a lot of potential.

Mixbook allows you create a slideshow with collaborators. It seems fairly similar to Fliptrack — without the music — but I might be missing some differences.

Google Maps has a neat feature so you can create maps with others. The fine blog Free Technology For Teachers has a nice video showing how it works.

Zee Maps is another simple tool for collaborative map creation.

Shutterfly seems to have a special collaborative feature that allows you to make joint photobooks.

There are a number of online word processors that invite easy collaboration, and not the least of these is Google Docs. You can find others by looking at the list of sites I’ve made for real-time collaboration.

I just added a new one called 2collab. You can read my post about it here.

Here’s one more site I’ve added to the list — Imagination Cubed. You might want to read my post describing it.

I also recently added another site called Sketch Planet. You can read my post about it here.

And here’s yet another application I’ve added to this list. It’s called Panraven, and I’ve posted about it here.

I’ve added one more site — it’s called Dipity. You can read my post about it here.

Here are a couple of site that I haven’t really tried yet, but appear to have some potential:

Protagonize is going to be a wonderful site for student collaboration, but not until they create a feature that allows private groups to be created. The site’s owner says that’s going to be coming soon. The site allows you to write basically collaborate in writing “choose your own adventure” stories that take you on different paths. ESL teachers also call them Action Mazes.

Kaltura is another site that seems to have some possibilities, though appears a little complicated to me. It’s a collaborative video-creation site, and you can either modify videos that are already on the web, or ones that you upload.

(Note: I’m adding The Broth to this list)

Again, I want to emphasize that this is a pretty darn tentative list, one that I only consider a first draft.

Please share reactions and other suggestions!

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