The Gift of Collaborative Software
Discovering a new, helpful software tool can be as exciting as opening a gift! Check out some of these free tools that can be used to support remote, collaborative learning in 2012.
Moonfruit
Website builder that is super easy to use! About a year ago I was asked to create a website for a non-profit. Within 12 hours of discovering Moonfruit I had a nice site for our organization that continues to be uber easy to maintain by educators that have zilch programming experience. I can only imagine how helpful this tool could be for middle school/high school project teams.
Channel Me
Lets you surf the same website with one or more friends. Additionally, you can very easily insert annotations on a page, IM, and record your session.
Mindomo
Mind mapping software that allows you to collaboratively organize thoughts with colleagues, embed pictures, video, and audio. With the click of a button you can turn your mind map into a presentation. Mindomo is now available on Google Apps! A free account allows you to create up to three maps.
Viddix
Viddix can be used for presentations, pitches, lectures, and more! A teacher or student can show his slides next to his video, a marketeer can offer a PDF download with extra information on a product, and a blogger can ask a question which can be answered instantly by viewers using a poll. The dual-screen player allows you to add all kinds of content to your video using a second screen called the "iPanel". You can pause the video panel at anytime to explore text, links, and files. When ready, continue playing the video and the iPanel continues where you left off.
Prezi
Tired of creating linear presentations with pre-determined white space? If so, you need to check out Prezi! I shared this tool with my colleagues about three years ago and everyone that saw it became an advocate! Clients think endless hours were spent creating a presentation when the opposite is true--thanks to an intuitive user interface. Have fun making your presentations zoom!
Comic Life 2
Drag in your pictures, captions, lettering text ('ka-blam!'), and speech balloons and your work is done! We had serious fun using this software at Six Red Marbles to storyboard ideas for an animation.
Tiki Toki
Beautiful, web-based timeline software that allows you to add Flickr images, embed videos, share timelines with others, color-code stories, and choose background images. Imagine the fun of creating a timeline of a famous person, family history, digital portfolio, and more! Get your creative juices flowing by checking out some of the great timelines that have already been created using Tiki Toki.
VoiceThread
VoiceThread is being used by educators around the world. A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in five ways--using voice (with mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via webcam). I had the pleasure of watching elementary school students use VoiceThread in preparation for an author visit. I'm sure the author was delighted to hear from them!
Robin Brandenburg supports Six Red Marbles product development and provides plenty of creative direction. She loves the research behind learning.
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