Week 5 Thing #11: Explore Award Winning Web 2.0 Sites

Oh my! I chose from the award winners list and went to the Lulu site for books and they can help you publish your very own book. The do take a cut of the profits, but the whole process is right there. I watched the tutorial on how it all works, and it is amazingly simple. That is one thing I have noticed about much of this Web 2.0 "stuff" is how amazingly simple it is once you get in and play with it. The hard part is keeping on top of it, and finding the time to explore them all.

I wonder about self-publishing, however, and envision legions of wanna-be writers publishing and promoting their books (you can directly market from this site as well, via Amazon and such!) and I do worry about the quality of literature. There is a reason for editors and editing, though I do think the system we have now is so focused on only publishing that which has potential block-buster appeal, that this is a nice solution for those who might be more in a niche market.

I saw that GoogleDocs was the #1 winner for online collaboration tools, and this is one we use as a staff at the school already. I also used this one in planning a road trip with a fellow teacher last year. It is a great tool!

I also use Delicious as well, and love that one. I haven't done much with sharing my bookmarks, but I like being able to access my bookmarks from any computer. Another great tool.

I then explored Docstoc.com and searched under education-teachers-highest rated and found all kinds of useful things my teachers will be excited about--it is a place where other educators have uploaded their lessons, lesson plans, organizational tools, etc. and it has some really good stuff--some garbage, too! It has a sign-up for earning money in some way, though the downloading of peoples' offerings is free--the earning comes in with advertising or something. That would be interesting to explore, to see how you could earn money by posting your lesson plans and ideas. One item I found in particular is a math Jeopardy powerpoint. I know our kids love those, and I plan to pass that on to our fifth grade teachers.