And now, the fun stuff.
Blogs and Blogging
Some great explanations of how RSS feeds and blogging work are available from Lee LeFever's The CommonCraft Show at his website and on Youtube. He also has great video tutorials on Social Networking and ZOMBIES. Yeah, don't go uneducated about this rising threat.
Blogs can be a way to share more than pictures of your cat and your brother's band. Blogs can be used just like Webpages to share information and authorship, so consider using a blog for a journal, a collective project, an anthology, or zine.
Edublogs -Wordpress style blog, for teachers and students
Blogspot -open and free blog service
Feed Aggregators are tools that allow you to "subscribe" to RSS feeds. Those are indicated every time you see a little orange "chicklet" on a website or blog. What it means is that the page is, in essence, "broadcasting" over a feed that you can have saved on your aggregator. You'll never have to check your favorite bookmarked sites again, they come to you. Log into your aggregator and anything that has been updated on anything you subscribe to will appear before your eyes.
Bloglines
Gregarius
Sage - this integrates with the Firefox browser, but I haven't tried it yet.
Blog Search/Bookmark Tools
Social Bookmarking and Archiving Tools
Social bookmarking can be used not only to share your favorite internet spots with friends, but to keep bookmarks in cyberspace that aren't dependent on your internet browser or the school computer's whims. Save your bookmarks with one of these sites, and use them from anywhere, or collaborate with friends and classmates on research. Archiving refers to saving what you find on the internet so that when pages move or are redesigned you haven't lost your information. Since the amount of space you have on the school servers is so limited, saving every page of information isn't possible in the "traditional" manner, and once again, you can't access it from other locations readily.
Spurl
Del.icio.us -has an imbedded "chicklet" for Firefox users.
Furl -this is one that archives the web pages so you don't lose the content if the page changes.
Google Notebook -this is an archiving journal, has an embedded "right click" feature and notebook button for Firefox.
Bibliography Tools
These are services that help you write a bibliography page for your research paper no matter what format you require.
CitationMachine
NoodleBib Express - check out all the NoodleTools
Search Tips
-Searches and Sources
(Boolean logic, the invisible web, and other cool things your media specialist can teach you and your kids about “valid” research)
Searchenginewatch Internettutorials.net Kathyschrock.net Google.com/help MCIU.org-searchtips
Collaborative Writing
Word Processors in cyberspace not only allow you to publish directly to the web, but also to work with friends/classmates from anywhere with internet access.
Wikis are another type of collaborative medium that allows you to link pages together into a larger document to create an outline or database of information.
Wikispaces
Open Source/Free Software
The Open Source movement has made many tools available free to download off the internet. If there's a program you can't live without, it probably has a parallel in open source.
Firefox -the premiere web browser on the planet! ; )
Audacity -audio recording and editing software utilizing multiple tracks. *you must also download the LAME MP3 encoder!!!!
GIMP -photo editing and manipulation (like Photoshop)
Kompozer (And the older Nvu) -web design and editing software for creating web pages (like Dream Weaver)
Screenhunter -a screen capture tool with many features
Wink - a motion screen capture tool. You can "capture" what you do on your computer screen and save it as a movie with narration.
Skype -free voice, video, and IM all in one to any other Skype user. Call any land or cell phone in the universe for @$.02 a minute.
Flickr - this one is great and allows lots of free upload space.
Photobucket
Bubbleshare
Tabblo
OurStory
Podcasting & Vodcast -Production & Posting
Video
JumpCut - produce
YouTube -post/search
VodCastTV -post/search
Podcast Alley -post/search
Yahoo Podcast Directory -post/search
Audio