SSLA Conference: Inquiry Tools Smackdown

Presented by Donna Desroches and Carlene Walters
Presentation wiki: http://disruptiveinnovators.wikispaces.com/Inquiry+and+Social+Media


Tools for Inquiry:


Planning: 

1. Blogs and Wikis: It is very important for students to have a blog or a wiki to share their work. Setting these up at the start, provide students the opportunity to post and keep track of their work. It becomes a management tool that students have access to right at the start.
2. Social Bookmarking: Delicious
3. Citation: Bibme.org: Create your own bibliographies and then copy and paste it into research papers.
4. Net Vibes: Personal Learning Environment (PLE) - have your students make their own environment to start from instead of providing that yourself.
5. Newscred: RSS News feed - personalizing streaming presented in the context of creating your own newspaper.

Wonder:

1. Visualization & Clustering

• Google WonderWheel - simplifying and arranging search results
• VisualThesaurus - discover the connections between words in a visually

2.  Tracking Your Thinking

• Evernote - Save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer or device you use. For free.
• WallWisher – An online notice board. It invites social negotiation of thought as students can post questions and contribute to other queries
• Wallwisher Tool in Science Classes

3.  Learning from Others

• Skype
• Around the World with 80 Schools
• Skype an Author Network
• LearnCentral - Sponsored by Elluminate, it combines asynchronous social networking and the ability to store and organize resources with the live, online meeting. It's free!

 Investigating and Collaborating:
Explore 
Finding Information

1. Using the social media tools in the online databases
   Gale
   Gale Widgets - embed in your school library Web page
2. Wolfram Alpha for Educators> using WA in math
   example using socio-economic data
3. Search engines> Sweet Search -
   Sweet Search for teacher-librarians
4. GoogleForms - my favourite - so easy to create surveys
5. Search in Twitter/Delicious/Diigo
6. InstaPaper -Collect Web pages to bookmark or readlater.. When you find something you want to read, but you don't have time, click Read Later
7. Readability - A simple tool that makes reading on the Web easier and less distracting by removing the clutter around the text.

Analyze 

Mindmapping Tools 

Concept maps are useful tools for helping students organize information about important topics by showing relationships between concepts and standards.

• bubbl.us
• Webspiration
• Mindmapping article explains how tools like bubbl.us, and EyePlore can be used as graphic organizers.
• Example - using bubbl.us to help students organize ideas while note-taking.

Graphing Tools

• Pretty Graph
• Create a Graph

Highlighting Tools

• Diigo
• First Thoughts on Using Diigo in Class...
• Awesome highlighter

Synthesize/Coalesce

Screen Capture Tools

• Jing (requires download)
• How to Use Jing in Your Classroom
• Screencast-o-matic - no download required
• ScreenToaster- the demo
• SmartRecorder- use your Smartboard
• Wordle
• Top Uses for Wordle
• Piclits
• TubeChop - Allows learners to easily chop an interesting section from any YouTube video and share it.

Document The Process

• googledocs
• blog
• wiki

Observe and Participate 

Backchannelling

• Chatzy
• Twitter
• Edmodo
  
  
  
  • Edmodo Page (example)
• TodaysMeet