Web+2.0+Tool+Details

**Web 2.0 Tools I have selected for aiding teachers: **

1. AVS Video Tools (from Online Media Technologies Ltd.)
AVS Video Tools is a suite of compatible video tools for capturing, editing, and format converting video clips for use in windows applications and web pages. The tool suite works well for novice users due to its simple and straight forward controls and a design that uses a set of compatible but separate tools instead of a single tool with very complicated controls. Many of the other free/low cost tools available today suffer because their implementation is the more complex single tool that tries to do everything.  Video Editing begins with a video source. The AVS Video Editor tool allows the user to work with video data from 3 sources: Importing video files, Capturing video from a camcorder, or capturing video from an area on the computer’s screen. AVS Editor’s ability to capture Video from an area on the computer’s screen is uncommon for a tool at its price. When the editor captures video from the computer’s screen, it also captures audio from the computer’s microphone so that the user can narrate the actions (s)he is doing. The ability to capture the narration is great for creating computer instructional videos and augmenting presentations.  Video Editing allows multiple video tracks to be merged into a final video product with typical video effects such as fading in and out, volume controls, text overlays, etc. The final video output can be saved in multiple formats such as AVI, MPEG, WMV, DVD disk, or flash web files.  The AVS Video Tools is well suited for teachers and students because of its flexibility and ease of use. It is a solid tool for teachers and students to create video content for their presentations, projects and web sites. Although the tool is not free, the cost is reasonable ($59 for all tools and lifetime updates)

**2. Skype ** Tool for audio and video conference calling between computers. Skype is free and has a large current user base that can be called with minimal setup and minimal cost. Skype uses whatever speakers, microphones, and optionally a web-cam that the user has installed on their computer. Speakers and Microphones are built into most computers today and if not, they can be supplied by a simple standard audio headset of individual devices.  Many students and their families already use skype to call friends and relatives today because it is the simplest and cheapest point-2-point video conferencing tools available. Skype’s main competition is Microsoft’s operating system’s video conferencing tool ( which does not allow communications to non-windows computers) or video camera manufacturer’s software which typically require both computers to use the same brand of camera. Therefore, Skype’s main competition limits the community that can be talked to.  I think there are two very strong uses for Skype in the classroom environment. First I see it as a great tool for building cross geography/cross culture relationships for students. Although allowing students to talk to people in the far east or West reaches of the world is limited by time zone changes, People with similar latitudes but different longitudes are on the similar time zones while being very different in cultures. For example, Why not encourage US students to peer-mentor South American Students with their English and visa-versa for American Student’s Spanish?  The second important use for Skype would be for improving Parent-Teacher communications. If the teacher setup a special Skype account that they logged onto at specific times in the evening, than a parent could easily reach them during that time and discuss any questions they had with the teacher. This could also work for tutoring support without making the student travel to a tutoring center. This concept is currently being used by private tutoring services, so why not leverage the concepts others have pioneered?  

**3. Download Tube ** <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Download Tube is a tool to capture and download YouTube video clips that can be used within web sites and presentations. YouTube has become the most popular service for hosting video uploads and more importantly, it has a strong search engine to allow a user to find pertinent video clips to use. In our current, highly visual age, the use of Video in presentations is a very powerful tool, too powerful to be ignored in our teaching. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Most students today routinely use YouTube to see what is going on in both their own world and the overall world. Because almost any message can be posted to YouTube, a student can easily be miss-led by inaccurate and/or intentionally erroneous information. For example, some people have posted information and video commentaries claiming that the Holocaust never actually happened. It is therefore important to teach students how to find relevant video content and how to analyze the validity of what they find on YouTube. This ability to analyze and question information sources is very important for all media sources, and YouTube provides a great starting point to teach the concept because it is heavily used by students today and has many erroneous postings that students can find and document.

<span style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2;">**<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 18pt;">4. Google Translate ** <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">Tool to translate text to and from multiple languages. GoogleTranslate is a free tool that is available on Google’s main web site. It supports 58 languages! Google Translate can also translate full web sites by just typing in the web site’s URL instead of text to be translated. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"> Google translate has been criticized for not creating the best possible translations, but it has constantly improved over time. One way to improve your confidence in the translation Google provides is to have Google translate the results back into the original language. If the text originally supplied is not equivalent to the text returned from translating the original text to and from the targeted language, the translation is probably questionable. To improve my confidence in Google Translate’s results, I sometimes modify my original English wording until I can get the translated text that has been translated to and then from the target language to match what I start with. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"> I would like to use Google Translate in the classroom to help students find and maintain pen-pals in different countries. My Son Currently has one international pen-pal who is a student we support through a missionary group. The Boys communicate today by hand written letters that are translated by the missionary staff. The current process is very slow, so the boys lose continuity and much of their interest. If the students couple communicate directly, with minimal delay, they would communicate much more and learn much more about each other’s life and culture. In an age of globalization, America is far behind other countries in acknowledging the value of understanding other world views.

<span style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 2;">**<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 18pt;">5. Google Sketchup ** <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">The Google Sketchup tool to allow a user to create 3-D graphical models that can be rotated. The tool is free and available on the Google web site. Although this tool requires downloading and installing locally, it is very easy to use with good tutorials and runs on multiple platforms. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> I found this tool this semester before this assignment while working with a middle school Math teacher who was looking for a way to help students visualize basic 3D geometric shapes. The teacher found that some students could not internalize the concept of how a 3D shape’s sides related to the flattened out exterior shapes that would be required to make a cardboard model of the 3D shape. The students especially had trouble understanding what the back side faces of the shape looked like without being able to rotate the shape so the backside faces were in visible in the front. Particularly problematic were concepts like the angle of backside face edges when the face was rotated during the flattening of the sides into a single plane. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> Google Sketchup works like a simple 3D Computer-Aided-Design (CAD) software package. It works with solid modeling techniques that are more logical to kids than point-and-line CAD modeling techniques. The middle school students we have taught using Sketchup needed some guidance, but had conceptual breakthroughs in their learning and understanding of 3D geometry that they may not have been able to fully understand without a tool like Sketchup. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> I would like to use Sketchup in teaching basic Geometry concepts where I could demonstrate the relationships between solid 3D shapes and their surface areas.