Apps of Interest
A colleague just emailed to ask me what Web 2.0 tools I thought should be on the list of “apps higher ed folks should know about.” When I’d written it I figured it worth while to just post it somewhere for everyone so here you go! It’s a rough…what free, seemingly non-education purposed apps would you add to the list?
- Flickr: www.flickr.com Useful for posting images and short videos. Allows for privacy settings, tagging, and easy aggregation to other sites
- Twitter: www.twitter.com Microblog (kind of a mashup between a social network, instant message and blog) huge for collaboration, asking questions, sharing links and info. Easy to aggregate into other tools like Facebook etc. There are other microblogs too….Jaiku, Pownce both worth a look
- BlackBoard Facebook app: This is a huge deal for instructors who use Bb. I think we’ll see lots more students actually using Bb if they can access it easily through Fb
- Remember the milk: Rememberthemilk.com A to do list app that plugs into Fb as well as Gmail. You can send items to it from a mobile phone, web, and voice
- Jott: jott.com Free voice to text service that’s useful for taking field notes, sending voice emails, and even blogging from your phone
- Second LIfe: Duh!
- Google docs: These are huge in business and should be bigger in education. They make collaboration much easier and document sharing super simple. Plus they overcome all the “i left it on my computer at home” excuses for submitting homework
- Twitpic: twitpic.com easily sends pics from a mobile phone to twitter. Alternative to uploading to Flickr or another image hosting site and really simple to use
- Igoogle, pagevines, Yahoo Pipes: All aggregators that help pull information to you rather than you having to look for them. Handy little widgets for news, blogs and other feeds
- RSS: I like the google reader RSS service but there are lots. The bonus of google reader is that i can export the .opml file and share it within someone else. They upload it into their RSS reader and they’re suddenly subscribed to all the blogs I am. Great for sharing sites with students all at once