One of the tools that I found the most interesting was photosharing. Photosharing, web 2.0 style, doesn't mean bringing in your copies of the pictures you have taken all year to distribute to your students' parents (Sorry, Erika!). What it does mean is that you can create groups in programs like Flickr and Picassa that allow just you and your students' parents to view, upload and download. So, for instance, in September, I create an account on Flickr and create a new group "Ms. Scirica's Fifth grade class." At Back to school night, I get all the parents email addresses and invite them to join my group. I've set the group up so that only those who I have specifically invited can view the photos so there is no privacy or security issues. Now, we have a group set up where any parent can add pictures from class events, field trips or school events to the group. If I then see one that I like and want to have a print made, I can then download it to my computer and print it using my favorite method (costco.com). The nice thing is that all the parents don't have to buy from the same site in order to get a copy of the picture like you would with some photo-storing sites such as Kodak. One of my pet peeves is when I get an album from someone else and I have to register and order from their picture site.
One site that I found really interesting from the web 2.0 threads is Animoto. Animoto allows you to create free 30 second video clips that look really awesome. You simply upload the photos of your choice, pick a song from one of theirs or upload your own, and then give the site about 5 minutes and it creates this really professional looking video clip. Clips longer than 30 seconds will cost you money, but I was able to get about 15 pictures into my 30 second clip aong with text at the end too. From a non teaching standpoint, I made one of these with pictures from our disneyland trip and my 5 year old son thought I was the coolest mom ever. For a classroom setting, I could see my self using this to create a quick clip of pictures and music to introduce a lesson. There are plenty of sites out there that have copyright free images that could be used and then pick a fun song to jazz it up and away you go. A quick, easy, and visually engaging introduction to a new topic. Another fun way to use it in the classroom would be to create a clip for each student on his or her birthday. You could use fun birthday picurtes as well as pictures of that student. This would take less than 10 minutes to create, and each child would get a special personalized little video that you could then share with their parents for further home viewing.
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