TILT - Teachers Improving Learning with Technology

Friday, October 28, 2005

TILT Quickie - Web-based Applications for Students and Teachers

'Back in the day', we used to run programs and applications off of CDs. With the expansion of the Internet, we now are able to purchase, download, and install these programs, but they often cost a lot. What's worse, installating these programs requires special permissions on our school servers most of us don't have (or know how to use).

What we're now seeing is a growth in web-based applications - that is, programs that run right through our web browsers. I've featured a few in previous episodes (e.g. Pod-o-matic for example). The 'new' Internet (sometimes referred to as Web 2.0) is producing more and more of these interactive web-based applications. Featured in this 'Quickie' episode of TILT are 3 fantastic examples illustrating this growing phenomenon:

  • Think Free Office Online - (00:25) a web-based FREE word processor, presentation software, and spreadsheet that 'look and feel' very similar to Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel
  • Project Cam - (04:06) a FREE, web-based communication application which features video, voice, and text chat as well as file sharing - perfect for communicating from classroom to classroom
  • Document Converter eXPress - (07:30) this web-based program converts files to .pdf Adobe Reader documents as well as numerous other file types online for FREE
Good news everyone - I believe I've fixed the audio distortion you may have heard on previous episodes. Now I no longer sound like Darth Vader's little brother :)

Click to view TILT Quickie - Web-based Applications for Students and Teachers(22Mb MPEG-4 Video) (To save video, right-click on the link and choose 'Save Target As...' or 'Save Link As')

3 Comments:

  • At 1.11.05, Blogger Clark ov Saturn said…

    Great stuff! Very useful. You mention something very important for education using technology today: many students cannot access things they need to because of over-bearing firewalls and other protective measures! I have students in high schools in Colorado trying to learn German with my online German classes, who can't get to audio and video materials because the school's have blocked all kinds of media files from being accessed. And installing software they need, such as realplayer, or Quicktime, and the list goes on. This is increasingly a problem and a big question: when is "protecting" the students from harmful material actually "preventing" them from learning????? !

     
  • At 18.5.06, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Another good free source to PDF converter at http://www.freepdfconvert.com

    It can also convert back PDF to DOC.

     
  • At 22.4.09, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Very useful information, especially since it is a free source that students and teachers can utilize. The great thing about this is that there is not a lot of difference. i pretty much saw it the same as word and excel. Definitely thanks for sharing!

    Mike A

     

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