Web 2.0 Toolkit - hottest programs

Animoto
Animoto is a free video program that allows you to create a 30-second music video using your favorite photos or other images. After uploading your files, Animoto provides the music to match the images and then renders a music video that can be shared or linked to Web sites.

Audacity
Free, cross-platform sound editor Audacity (available for download at audacity.sourceforge.net) has become a mainstay for those involved in podcasting. The software allows you to record and edit programs quickly without the need for prior experience in sound editing. For those who want more information about using this software, there's an online tutorial/user's manual. Tech-savvy people who are more experienced with the program might check out Audacity Portable program, which you can download to your USB drive and take with you for impromptu podcast editing even while on the road.

Delicious
Delicious, a popular social bookmarking service, allows users to tag, save, manage, and share Web pages from a centralized source. This tool provides immediate access to its bookmarks, regardless of their physical location. The power of Delicious lies not only in making your bookmarks accessible to you, but in making everyone else's bookmarks available also. By tagging your Web pages with brief one- to two-word descriptors, you enable a search to be conducted across the entire site for bookmarks with similar labels.

Google Applications
Google Applications—including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Sites—is perhaps one of the best free office suites available for classroom use. Students, teachers, librarians, administrators, and parents can easily create, collaborate, access, and share information resources, assignments, projects, calendars, and even Web pages, all using Google Apps.

With iGoogle, students can create a personalized Web site that can be easily designed and accessed within most classrooms and libraries. Aside from the ability to add unique and fun resource links to an iGoogle site, students can also create links to the library's databases, allowing them the ability to locate and use those critical resources without moving in and out of sites.
Promoted extensively by information literacy experts such as David Loertscher, a professor at San Jose State University, iGoogle Web pages can function as a student's personalized workspace, allowing them to create the perfect site for storing their links for learning (and entertainment) in one place. Visit here to learn more about Loertscher's insights on the use of this hot 2.0 tool. This tutorial will show you how to set up your own iGoogle page.

Glogster
Glogster lets users create an online interactive poster, which can be shared or uploaded to wikis and other sites. By uploading photos, images, and even videos, Glogster transforms a static online Web page into a visually exciting and interactive online presentation.
Like most other popular 2.0 software sought after by educators, Glogster now provides an educational version of their program. Within this site are tutorials, lesson plans, and examples of how educators are using Glogster in the classroom and library.
As a unique visual literacy tool that's all about creativity and ease of use, Glogster is a must-have tool.

SlideShare
The largest presentation-sharing community online, SlideShare has found its way into education rather quickly. In fact, SlideShare has an entire area devoted to educational presentations contributed by other members. Users can upload and retrieve presentations and embed selected ones into their Web page within minutes. Aside from the practical use of sharing information, SlideShare offers teachers and librarians who might be intimidated by 2.0 tools the ability to utilize more familiar software programs (such as PowerPoint or Word) and create an entirely new presentation online for their students to access.

VoiceThread
VoiceThread is enormously popular in the K-12 community. Enabling the creation of collaborative, multimedia slideshows, VoiceThread accommodates images, documents, and videos, and allows users to navigate pages and comment in five ways: using voice (via microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). Students can share VoiceThreads with teachers, friends, and others and allow them to respond with their own recorded comments. VoiceThreads can even be embedded to show and receive comments on other sites and can be exported to MP3 or DVD format.
Students and teachers will discover how easily this program can be used to promote presentation skills, digital design, or collaborative interaction within the classroom—or across the globe. Librarians can use VoiceThread to create presentations on information literacy.

Zamzar
Zamzar has taught us to enjoy the weekends once again. Rather than spending hours trying to locate the correct software to convert a video file from WMA to AVI for a Monday morning presentation, consider Zamzar, which converts a wide range of audio, video, document, and compressed files into useable formats. Available for five free conversions a month, this software makes converting files a snap! To learn more about this product and how it can be used, visit www.zamzar.com/conversionTypes.php and www.zamzar.com/url/overview.php.

Your Privacy and Safety

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has just released a free online booklet for students about privacy and the law.

• What: 'Private i - your ultimate privacy survival guide'
• Where: www.privacy.gov.au/topics/youth
  - Social networking and online privacy
  - ID theft prevention
  - ID scanning and privacy
  - Health and privacy rights
  - Top ten hints for keeping your personal information private
  
• Teachers - see also the 'Think before you upload' video, posters and teaching resources