For most of this week, I’ve been going off-script to re-familiarize myself with many of the tools I’ve used during my MET experience, including Prezi, Google Sites, Toondoo, Animoto, and xtranormal, but I’ve also managed to explore a number of other exciting tools I intend to employ in the future including Vuvox, Linoit, Edmodo, and Glogster. What I love about many of these tools is that they can be used to construct microcontent for the web collaboratively. Google docs is a fantastic place to start with when collaboratively authoring, but sites like Linoit are also very exciting because they afford the opportunity to include video, pictures, and music alongside text; allowing students and instructors to communicate ideas in the medium they feel most comfortable.

My primary project this week was to compile a list of resources on Delicious to share with others, and to keep for myself (one of the many benefits of internet-based content creation is that both are possible simultaneously!). It certainly isn’t “finished,” but it’s at least a good start. It will serve as a resource for me when i need to give my students a new challenge or when a delivery mode for certain content is either not working properly or simply needs refreshing. I expect this list of mine to evolve as well, considering how quickly these wonderful (and free!) sites pop up, I plan to keep my eyes peeled for other useful resources on the horizon, and add them to my bookmarks as I go.

You can view my Web 2.0 essential tools Delicious stack by following the link. The Wordle I’ve created above highlights the tools and various tags associated with them for quick reference. I hope everyone had as much fun playing working with Web 2.0 tools as I did this week :)

Dave