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December 23, 2007

Top 2007 Education Apps: Learning 2.0

Michael Arrington

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A teacher and active blogger named Larry Ferlazzo has put together his list of the top education startups of 2007.

The list was clearly put together with students in mind. And while I’m pretty sure that the average student can get to graduation with little more than Wikipedia, Delicious and perhaps an occasional stolen term paper to help them along the way, I’m glad to see someone highlighting tools to help students learn and present their work.

The list is a good start and includes startups like Footnote, Fleck, Bookr, Sketchcast and others.

Tumblr is, inexplicably, named the top learning aid. “It’s a great place for students to easily post a whole lot of their work” Ferlazzo says.

But here’s what I really want to know - If you are a student, what applications are you actually using to complete your courses? And here’s a second question - if you combined all of the time you spend on all of those sites, would it even come close to the attention you give to Facebook?

(and before you say it in the comments - yes, it is obviously a slow news day with the holidays)

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  1. Top 2007 Education Apps: Learning 2.0  »TechAddress

    December 23rd, 2007 at 7:30 pm

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  1. Will

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:02 pm

    So true about Wikipedia and Del.icio.us. I’m a college student, and my friends and I use del.icio.us all the time when researching papers.

  2. Allen Stern

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:02 pm

    Easybib:
    http://www.easybib.com
    during the school year, a bib is created nearly every second of every day

    (I know the founders)

  3. Will Johnson

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:03 pm

    99% of students never go further than the 3 W’s: Word, Wikipedia, and Webmail. Even for tech-savvy students, there usually is no need for anything more than Wikipedia for researching, Word for composing, and Gmail for moving data.

  4. Brian

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:04 pm

    Let us know next time it’s a slow news day — Plenty of your readers will make news for the sake of getting TC’d ;-)

    Best educational startup? CollegeHumor.com.

  5. Brian

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:06 pm

    Btw, Allen’s right. Easybib’s a gem and makes the most onerous part of writing a paper a cinch. Definitely deserves a stop at the top of the list.

  6. Michael Arrington

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:06 pm

    Brian - my guess is that it will be a slow news day tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after. :-)

  7. Will Johnson

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:07 pm

    Brian, you can say that again :-)

  8. Michael Arrington

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:07 pm

    Ok, keep these serious suggestions coming. We’ll put together a TechCrunch Reader Certified List Of Educational Aids, or something.

  9. Michael Arrington

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:09 pm

    Are there any apps that assist in collaborative note taking during classes? Or is everyone just constantly on facebook and can’t be bothered with notes. :-)

    update to this comment: I emailed the same question to Ferlazzo and he wrote back that http://notesake.com/ is good for collaborative note taking. Thoughts?

  10. Allen Stern

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:17 pm

    Here’s a review of another one:
    http://www.centernetworks.com/.....s-gradefix

    Gradefix - helps you schedule your homework so it actually gets done :)

  11. Allen Stern

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:18 pm

    last one - check out brian’s list over at solution watch - he has just about every school tool categorized and reviewed - 3 parts:
    http://www.solutionwatch.com/5.....20-part-1/

  12. Michael Arrington

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:22 pm

    good stuff Allen, thanks.

  13. Andres

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:26 pm

    Hola,

    What about Grockit? You covered them a while back and I signed up w/ them and nailed my GMAT!!!! They should be on this list.

    http://www.grockit.com

  14. Jesse

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:40 pm

    Sparknotes.com got me through high skool. =D

  15. Kiki

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:48 pm

    I’m surprised quizlet.com isn’t on here. It’s a web based flashcard memory learning system with 3 million terms questions.

  16. Don't waste money

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:52 pm

    When you run startup…You have to be careful how you hire all the college Graduates. Remember Enron, Worldcom, and other chapter 11 corporation. They hired many many bright college students.

    Three responsiblity for startups.
    1.) Take care the company
    2.) Fire dishonest employees, office bullies…
    3.) Watch revenue & security

    A brilliant muslim programmer who got picked by office bully(College Jocks). Which one would you fire?

    A.) Muslim programmer
    B.) Office bully

    Well, Bill Gates is nerd. You should keep all the nerds in company. They are best.

  17. Brent

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:53 pm

    Everybody uses gmail for mail (or whatever system the college uses for their .edu, but many forward to gmail), aim for instant messaging (yep, it’s true), i don’t know of a single college kids who knows about or uses delicious.

    Wikipedia is very popular but many teachers don’t trust it as a resource, some go so far as to not allow you to cite it for academic papers.

    Easybib.com was a lifesaver. Many uses google news for news stories.

    Nobody collaborates on notes, or school required using blackboard.com for many classes though we all hated it. That’s the only collaboration that occurs between students who don’t know each other, and only if the teacher themselves actively use blackboard.

    Collegehumor.com and youtube are still popular. Very few if any know what a blog is much less read em. Digg just jumped onto the radar of a few tech happy people recently.

    Stumbleupon was also getting a small following. And sorry Mike…TechCrunch wasn’t a check in for anyone outside the CS deptartment and a few of us crazy business tech guys.

    Many teachers have even started to outlaw laptops…since about 1 in 10 people with a laptop open actually uses it to take notes…gotta love free wifi in classrooms.

    Facebook’s changes are starting to annoy many of the college faithful…but it’s still checked before checking email.

  18. JKS

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:53 pm

    Check out ottobib.com
    It has prevented many headaches.

  19. obo

    December 23rd, 2007 at 6:58 pm

    I used TiddlyWiki for note-taking, then switched to a PmWiki on a stick because I liked being able to easily break off individual items to share with others, or quickly put it online for more direct collaboration. PmWiki’s better for me when quickly putting together printable pages of several articles.

    Also, while TW is neat, I had odd, quirky problems with articles not saving. Not good when that’s a lecture’s worth of notes.

    For profs that allow it, I turn the webcam around on my laptop and record the lectures. If not, I record it on my MP3 player.

    I use a lot of YouTube — there are some good basic calculus videos, and the people who make them are pretty good about posting video responses to good questions — and MIT’s OCW video lectures on iTunes. Our department has a decent library, as does the university at large.

    Other than that, everything else I use is usually mandated by the teacher or textbook. I don’t use Wikipedia, as even using it to find sources on some topics is unreliable. I don’t use online services if I can help it (though NoteSake and Bookr are cool) because Internet access around here goes out almost nightly, and I don’t need that happening the night before an exam.

    I quit Facebook after Beacon came out, but I rarely used it before that anyway. Friending counts for nothing, and all it led to in class were “dude can I copy ur notes” messages.

  20. Joe DiPasquale

    December 23rd, 2007 at 7:01 pm

    Interesting list.

    He should also check out CollegeWikis:
    http://www.CollegeWikis.com .

    Our motto is “Information for students, by students”. We bring together the content-creation power of sites like yahoo answers with the relevance of community affiliation. We have a presence at >200 schools and are growing rapidly, with over 9,000 topics so far.

    Try it out and ask a question or post something at your alma mater, and it will likely be replied to pretty quickly by others using CollegeWikis.

    -Joe
    suggestions [/at/] collegewikis.com

  21. Ballmer

    December 23rd, 2007 at 7:03 pm

    How did he miss MSN SchoolDaze.com?

    fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/

  22. Leko

    December 23rd, 2007 at 7:13 pm

    Sparknotes.com got me through high skool. =D

  23. I R SMART!!

    December 23rd, 2007 at 7:20 pm

    on collaborative note taking…

    we decide on IM who’s going to be the one taking notes for that day. the chosen one has to go class and also sign attendance sheet for the rest of us.

    :D

  24. Neil Kelty

    December 23rd, 2007 at 7:29 pm

    What about Andrew Sutherlands Quizlet?

  25. notsharp

    December 23rd, 2007 at 7:32 pm

    http://www.libx.org/
    This firefox extension solves the headache of accessing content through your schools library proxy (only colleges, and if your school isn’t using it talk to your librarian or IT personnel).

    http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/ (mac)
    open-source, lightweight PDF viewer/editor.

    http://yepthat.com/ (mac)
    this app blows me away. It will automatically scan the text of all your PDF files and present you with the most common words as tags and easily preview them. It’s not free, but worth it.

  26. MDR

    December 23rd, 2007 at 7:54 pm

    Socratube is in private beta at Cambridge University, it’s a video lecture system that runs through Facebook (and the university’s home site), and allows time-stamped notes, sharing, and communication functions between professors and students. It’s launching sometime in the new year.

  27. Joshua Cohen

    December 23rd, 2007 at 8:13 pm

    i thought i just posted but oh well here goes again.

    in order of most time spent:

    - sparknotes/gradesaver (all your notes for books, my mom said cliff notes but no one uses those now)
    -all the free stuff from the local library’s site (there are plenty of resources if you have a library card like encyclopedias that teachers won’t hate on you for citing - trust me, if you put wikipedia as your source, teachers do get pissed)
    - prepme (did my sat prep there, got a tutor from a good school, parents still think i should get a perfect score but i’m happy with mine, it’ll get me into Emory lol)
    - yahoo answers (find out which books are best for ap courses and college admissions advice)

    michael - i love your blog, but i don’t know a single teenager who uses any of the things you listed.

  28. Zaid

    December 23rd, 2007 at 8:58 pm

    The biggest scam in this industry is Blackboard. It is a billion dollar company that has somehow convinced thousands of universities to use their online student-teacher interaction system. The application itself looks like from the mid-90s and is a pain in the ass to use.

    What a sham. I am glad I am not in school at the moment. But it still hurts me to walk across the library and on one side see folks enjoying facebook–and struggling with blackboard.

  29. odonja09

    December 23rd, 2007 at 9:06 pm

    I agree with “Joshua Cohen”, the thing listed in the article are, as far as I know, not used by anyone I know for schooling, or research. In-fact, a lot of them end up taking more time to use than actually doing things the traditional way.

    The most important thing is not time saving programs which can in some situations take more time to use, it is finding and efficiently using information, and for that there is sparknotes, the citations on wikipedia (always have to check the citations on wikipedia), and of course any university or state library.

    The only thing here that I think sounds like it could be useful is NoteSake, but I have yet to try it.

  30. Tu

    December 23rd, 2007 at 9:27 pm

    Slow news day… heh

    Just thought I’d plug http://www.italki.com for learning foreign languages. I wish I had this when I was in college paying for language tutors. There are plenty of great podcasts, CDs, and websites for learning languages, but what I think most students are missing is a chance to really practice speaking the language. italki helps you find those language partners.

    The site also has community-based resources like an answers section, which allows you to ask native speakers questions, recommendations on other language resources, and more. There’s also a facebook application that connects facebook users and italki users for language exchange.

    If you’re learning a foreign language, I think it’s worth checking out…

  31. Jamie Stephens

    December 23rd, 2007 at 10:12 pm

    One type of learning tool that rarely gets mentioned on these lists is online portfolios used for measuring competencies in students. Many of these types of systems are mandated by colleges of educations and are starting to be used college and university-wide by many schools. They are often not that exciting, but they are extremely important for assessing the progress of students. And for the schools that use them, they are as ubiquitous to the students as Facebook (although without the fondness).

    Right now there are a few companies out there selling these systems to schools like mad before everyone really gets a grip on how they should work best. Just thought I would mention it as it is a good opportunity for someone to get in there and really make a difference in software that nearly every student will eventually use…before there is another Blackboard debacle.

  32. techguy

    December 23rd, 2007 at 10:36 pm

    Doesn’t apply to most people, but my stupid e-commerce/website teacher had us create a website. I rolled out a wordpress blog with the famous 5 minute installation and finished every assignment for the entire class. I don’t think the teacher new what wordpress did, but it did all of the functions he asked that we create. I appreciated him doing this, because then I was able to focus on my own blogs and self learning rather than listening to his waste of time lectures.

  33. Andrew C.

    December 23rd, 2007 at 11:14 pm

    I am a social media nut, so I have become dependent on a whole slew of sites while I’m in school, but I am definitely an exception…I highly doubt that most students have even heard of most of the sites he lists, though certainly many students could benefit from them (though they would face the chicken and the egg/critical mass problem).

    For sites beyond ‘web 2.0′, I would bet that mine or any fellow student’s top 5 list would look like this:

    1) Facebook
    2) Webmail
    3) Wikipedia
    4) Google (it is down this far because most people dont go to the site, they use a toolbar)
    5) Gmail

  34. Thurston

    December 24th, 2007 at 12:13 am

    I don’t know what sorts of schools those of you who rely on Wikipedia for research go to but it actually sucks for anything other than very general “get a feel for it” research.

    Information in Wikipedia is fraught with inaccuracies, spin, bias and plain old invented facts. You should really try to use sources as close to primary as possible. I have had so many students submit papers using inaccurate Wikipedia info that I strongly discourage it for anything more serious than taking a first, quick survey of some issue.

  35. TPerry

    December 24th, 2007 at 1:50 am

    Good comments guys. Also check out Shvoong Homework at http://homework.shvoong.com/ which allows students to manage and share class notes and homework, work in groups, interact with students and teachers, and meet new friends.

  36. Jane Hart

    December 24th, 2007 at 2:22 am

    Check out the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2007 - compiled from the Top 10 Tools lists of over 109 learning professionals during July and August 2007.

    http://www.top100tools.com/2007/

    We shall be starting the search for the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008 in the New Year.

  37. micfo.com

    December 24th, 2007 at 7:16 am

    Nice listing, also ratemyprofessors.com let connects students to help each other to choose courses each semester.

  38. Brad

    December 24th, 2007 at 7:19 am

    Check out http://www.monkeytex.com, an online LaTeX editor that allows collaboration, sharing, and more. LaTeX is the de facto word processor for science and math, but it is also robust enough for writing essays and novels.

  39. Frank Gruber

    December 24th, 2007 at 7:27 am

    Larry has a good round-up. He should check out Neulio, an Orlando-based free online course platform, that recently launched:
    http://www.somewhatfrank.com/2.....ti-le.html

  40. Ben Tucker

    December 24th, 2007 at 8:48 am

    I’m biased in this (I’m one of the founders), but BibMe is a student-originated startup trying to shakeup the bibliography generation space (ie. EasyBib & NoodleTools). The site offers free “AutoFill” functionality to make creating bibliographies a snap.

  41. Darcy R

    December 24th, 2007 at 9:03 am

    Awesome links everyone. However, my crazy, paranoid, overcrowded highschool has decided that it is a good idea to block Gmail and every other major email site (I have no idea what the teachers must be using, but the sites don’t work on their computers either) and a ton of really useful sites. I’ll be looking for a new way to easily transfer documents to and from home and school, but I think I’m also going to have a little chat with the IT department. I don’t think there’s any way I can proxy my way around it, is there? Perhaps one of these sites can serve instead.

  42. Steven Bao

    December 24th, 2007 at 9:46 am

    Check out Student Concourse - http://www.studentconcourse.com
    Academic organization and (soon) social network!

  43. Samuel Clay

    December 24th, 2007 at 12:07 pm

    I am a student, currently creating a project collaboration social network. It’s called SunRayLab and you can find the current build here: http://www.SunRayLab.com

    Very simple idea: Allow users to have documents, charts, timelines, maps, notebooks, blogs, photos, videos, forums, and file storage, and in turn, there is a social graph that binds users and their content together. All document editing is collaborative, with revisioning and simultaneous input.

    The point of SunRayLab is to allow students, professionals, and people from all over the world to collaborate on projects together. Projects can be small one-time efforts that are based on similar locations, or an on-going work that requires all of SunRayLab’s features. I just want to make it easy for anybody to collaborate with others.

    Everything on SunRayLab is free and I will do my best to keep it free. I also want low barriers for people, especially students, to start their own projects and collaboratively manage all of the project’s data easily. This is the tough part.

    I have been working on SunRayLab for a few months now and have about a year of development to go. Luckily, since I am a student, I can (and do) dedicate 18 hours a day on it. It’s fun.

    Please give me feedback, on design, on the business goals, or even on the market. I have some worthwhile experience behind me, so I definitely know what I am getting myself into. :-D

  44. Dave

    December 24th, 2007 at 12:37 pm

    Here’s another great tool to check out: the Study Groups app on Facebook. Our users are using it to discuss assignments, schedule group meetings, and to share and collaborate on class notes.

  45. Michael Arrington

    December 24th, 2007 at 12:42 pm

    Email from Gary Price:

    Michael:
    Greetings from DC and Merry Christmas. Saw your post re: education 2.0. Here are some additional compilations we’ve featured on ResourceShelf where we track this stuff regularly. We have many many many educators reading our site.

    1) http://www.resourceshelf.com/2.....l-a-story/

    2) http://www.resourceshelf.com/2.....take-notes

    3) http://www.resourceshelf.com/2.....and-tools/
    Chris Smith’s List to be specific.

    Hopefully, we can finally meet in 2008.

    cheers,
    gary

  46. Scott

    December 24th, 2007 at 6:48 pm

    There is also http://edu20.org…

  47. andrew pass

    December 24th, 2007 at 7:37 pm

    Steve Hargadon and I are very proud of our social networking site for teachers and other educators, Classroom 2.0. There are approximately 5,000 educators who regularly use this social network for substantive discussion. Classroom 2.0 is now beginning a series of live workshops around the country in which educators will learn together about the most effective ways of incorporating Web 2.0 into the teaching and learning process. Our first workshop will be in metro San Francisco February 1 and 2. Web 2.0 companies, such as wikispaces and Ning are sponsoring these workshops. If you are interested in learning more email me at ap@pass-ed.com.

  48. Patrick Barry

    December 25th, 2007 at 3:53 am

    http://www.allhonours.ie - small but growing Irish educational website. Q&A / tutor directory / videos etc.

    It is quite difficult to create educational sites that require user contributed content as students want information immediately to help answer homework or assignments. Typically they cannot afford to hang around a site waiting for an answer from the community.

  49. Ben Shine

    December 25th, 2007 at 1:48 pm

    O’Reilly’s Safari Online Library is the bomb for learning software engineering. I just upgraded from Safari Bookshelf, with which you can read ten or fifteen books at once for a monthly fee of about $20, to Safari Library, which gives you (gasp) online access to the entire O’Reilly oeuvre, plus dozens of other top technical publishers for $40/month. (No, I don’t work for O’Reilly; I’m just blown away by this service.)

    Granted this isn’t an appropriate site for K-12 students, nor even most undergraduate courses, but for education writ large, aka life-long learning, this site is the best resource I’ve found. It beats the pants off of JFGI. And come on, don’t we all spend at least $40 on a technical book every month? And sadly, too, those giant tomes tend to become obsolete in a few years. (Anybody want to buy my “Agile Web Development with Rails, 1st Edition”? I didn’t think so.)

  50. Steve Hargadon

    December 26th, 2007 at 9:49 am

    Andy Pass’s blatant plug aside (47), Classroom 2.0 (www.classroom20.com) is worth looking at. It is a social network for educators interested in the use of Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom. The site is public.

    The twist, of course, is that this is *teachers* looking to use Web. 20 in the classroom. While the levels of interest and commitment vary, the network has been growing 100 - 150 educators a week for some months, and there is at the core of users a passionate belief that the advent of the read/write web will be as significant socially, culturally, and educationally as the advent of the printing press–and likely more so. There are many educators who will tell you that their own learning has been transformed by the resources, networking, and collaborative aspects of Web 2.0–and they are intested in enabling the same engagement in their students that they now feel.

    So, the discussions at CR 2.0 are not just about what tools can be used, but how the tools are changing how we think about learning and education. A couple of quick notes:

    1. On the front page of the site, there is a linked list of read/write, “social” technologies that educators are using (or trying to use) in schools. For each category (e.g., “collaborative documents”) the link takes you to forum discussions about that particular Web 2.0 technology and classroom use.

    2. We also used Larry Ferlazzo’s post as a springboard for a discussion on 2007’s best Web 2.0 apps for education, but of course our list is largely from the perspective of educators: http://www.classroom20.com/for.....ic%3A91412

    3. Social networking in education is the fascinating dark horse in education. The stigma of MySpace/etc. has overshadowed the amazing changes that take place in educational environments when the tools of social networking are used with students and teachers. “Social Networks” are really just collections of Web 2.0 technologies used to build communities. CR 2.0 just won the 2007 EduBlog Award for “best use of a social network for educational purposes,” and there are many other just-as-worthy social networks building around both classroom use and teacher development. Ning has been the clear leader in this regard (all of the finalists for the award were Ning-based networks), largely because of the ability to build specialized networks, and their intuitive threaded discussion forums. (Full disclosure: I like what Ning does so much that I do consulting work for them, and run another Ning network for educators using Ning, http://education.ning.com.)

    I think we are in a very exciting time in history, and hope that you’ll continue to look at the uses of Web 2.0 in education, both from the student and educator perspectives, even when the news isn’t slow.

  51. Ray

    December 27th, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    http://www.bookrags.com/ solves the problem of teachers not letting you quote from Wikipedia - over 100 reputable sources covering millions of topics.

  52. fastfinge

    December 27th, 2007 at 6:04 pm

    Courses 2.0 (facebook app), scribd, gmail, wikipedia, google. Those are the ones I use.

  53. Rita

    December 29th, 2007 at 6:54 am

    Sorry got to read this a bit late, but glad I found it - very interesting and definitely not a slow news day item.

    We (University of Hertfordshire in the UK) are currently beta-testing a new site - dexmo.com

    It is currently being tested by the law faculty only, but it can be used by anyone, anywhere.

    It still has some features to launched, but could be useful.

  54. Victor Shamanovsky

    January 4th, 2008 at 9:11 pm

    Check out
    http://scratch.mit.edu

  55. Jon Bischke

    January 5th, 2008 at 11:44 am

    The thing that’s interesting about this space is that very few of the companies characterized as “Learning 2.0″ have really made learning social, which is exactly what I feel the 2.0 world is all about. That’s a shame because when you make something social is becomes not only more enjoyable but also a lot more effective.

    We’re still pre-launch but @ eduFire we’re hoping to join some of the other start-ups mentioned in this post and play a big part in moving online learning out of the dark ages into a new world where it’s fun and vibrant.

  56. Mark Cruthers

    January 5th, 2008 at 11:19 pm

    I highly recommend you take a look at Wiziq.

    WiZiQ is an online teaching platform, which provides a free virtual classroom environment for teachers to interact online and teach students in real time. Teachers can also build a profile, keep an availability schedule, and maintain a content library, which is associated with their profiles, by uploading PowerPoint presentations and PDF Files.

    Importance in Education

    Education like any other field, is evolving and e-learning is fast gaining significance in this domain. Web 2.0 has catalyzed this more and with a host of new tools, which can be deployed in teaching and learning, education will never be the same. WiZiQ has been a pioneer in this space with the free virtual classroom among other useful Web 2.0 features for educators and students like profiles, networking, content library, tests etc. As an online education platform, WiZiQ is focused towards education by actively participating in education technology networks, getting feedback from teachers and students about usability and using all this information to evolve further.

    Free Online Virtual Classroom

    WiZiQ’s free Virtual Classroom is an online internet mediated classroom where the teacher and the students are connected to share a common workspace. In this online session, they make use of audio-video conferencing, text chat, whiteboard, and content sharing capabilities. There are no costs for using the virtual classroom. The sessions are recorded and are available online on WiZiQ, which can be accessed for later review or reference.

    Attendees can join a session with privileges to converse verbally with others; draw and write on whiteboard; and share Presentations, PDFs, Flash and Images. The teacher may withdraw or re-assign these privileges to the attendees. A Teacher can withdraw privileges from the attendee in terms that the attendee can not converse, or upload anything to share on whiteboard; in this case, the attendee is a spectator. An attendee can also request for rights, in which case, the teacher can click on the attendee’s name to transfer control.

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