Webspiration, Googledocs, Flickr, Delicious: Do these 2.0 Apps Enhance Learning?

While I strongly think that using Web 2.0 tools can enhance learning, I’d not had experience with many of the options available and still have only tested or worked in a corner of what’s out there in cyberland. I have explored a few more lately that I want to talk about in this blog. Recently, along with some fellow classmates in my graduate program at Teachers College, I’ve been exploring sites like Webspiration, Googledocs, Flickr, and Delicious. Although these platforms all serve a similar purpose, to share information which is what Web 2.0 is all about, they may also be used for different purposes within the scope of collaboration and cooperative learning.

Webspiration is a mindmapping tool that aids in brainstorming and visualizing concepts in a spatial display model. The tool can enhance problem solving through helping the user organize thoughts and ideas individually or collectively. Collaborating with others in this online software is simple. The initiator of a brainstorm session can simply create a Webspiration page and invite others that will contribute to the page. All group members can contribute by adding ideas in the form of text, pictures, or video attachments. These contributions can be done at the same time. The software offers users the ability to view the ideas in the spatial display view or in an outline view format.

I found it to be easy to use and great for brainstorming with others. I do have some tips for those wanting to explore this mindmapping tool for potential use in classrooms or at work.

• Have a specific topic narrowed down to discuss. Broad topics that can be expounded on in many different ways can cause some disarray among contributors because the mindmap starts to branch off in too many directions preventing the group from seeing the big picture.
• Brainstorm in small groups so that all parties’ contributions can be truly evaluated and recognized by the group. Although the software works with larger groups, the brainstorming model can become ambiguous as more and more ideas are added. If you’re going to use this with a large group, it’s even more important to narrow down the topic.

I’m certainly not the expert on Webspiration having used it only a few times but this is my opinion on the software. Great tool and it’s free.

Googledocs is a great tool for sharing documents and collaborating with others in realtime. I like the user friendliness and the flexibility that this app offers making it easy for groups to make changes to and share documents and presentations, create spreadsheets, arrange meetings and much more. Because all of the documents are webbased they can be accessed from anywhere on any device that has Web access including smartphones.



Flickr and Delicious are both yahoo applications that give users the ability to share pictures and websites.

I explored flickr by uploading some pictures of my son and me and thought it was a great tool. I think that this might be a great getting to know you tool in classroom settings where new students are learning about each other and maybe especially in distance learning settings. It can be a great educational tool to aid in helping students visualize places they are learning about or subject matters they may be discussing. This site can enhance collaboration among educators and students enrich learning content to promote discovery various learning environments.

Delicious is great bookmarking tool for saving web content that can be accessed from any computer. The content you save can be organized by tagging bookmarks with your own style of indexing. You can share websites and resources found on the web with others simply by providing them with your delicious screen name. This is a great app in my opinion. I really enjoyed using it and found some interesting bookmarks on some of my classmates pages that I bookmarked for myself. This could be a great tool for any classroom. It's also an efficient way to organize all of the information that is disseminated over the Internet.