Web 2.0 Tools for
Desktop Publishing
The following is a review of several Web 2.0 tools I have
gained experience with during my time in Desktop Publishing. I have reviewed each tool, explained who I
thought it would be useful for, and identified any problems I experienced while
using it. I also included a rating and
links to the sites where you can access the tool.
Blogging Tools:
Blogger is a website that allows people to
create free blog pages. It is fairly
simple to use, and it would be a good option for a beginner blogger or an
experienced one. It is really easy to
set up a blog using Blogger. There are
templates to choose from, and you can individualize your own page with
customizable graphics, widgets, and formatting options. The site provides you with a Blogger site to
house your blog for free, but you also have the option to purchase a domain name
and still use the Blogger base to format your page. The site is designed to help beginner
bloggers learn and work within the system, and there are explanatory resources
throughout the site to help you understand what to do and how to do it. Blogger has many options for design and also
allows you to incorporate other elements of design to be included on your site
design or within posts. I have not
experienced any problems or glitches with the program. I will continue to use Blogger to develop my
Bass Talk blog. I think it is a great
blogging tool, and it makes sharing and networking with other online anglers
easy. I would recommend it to anyone. Rating = 10
Wordpress is another site where
people can create free blogs. Like with
blogger, users can use free Wordpress url pages or they can purchase domain
names and still use a Wordpress format to house their blog. It was easy to create an account for Wordpress
and easy to get started. However, based
on all the information and options available on Wordpress, it seems that this
site would be more useful to someone who wants to incorporate a lot of design
and/or technical elements to their blog.
Blogger is a more simple format for the everyday person to create and
maintain a blog. If you want to do
fancier design stuff within your blog, Wordpress might be a better option, as
it has lots of design tools and options. If not, Wordpress might confuse or frustrate
you. It just depends on what the user
wants. I noticed no glitches or problems
with the program. I would recommend Wordpress
to anyone. Rating = 10
Presentation Tools:
Prezi is a site that allows users to create
online presentations using virtual presentation boards with zooming
features. The presentation boards are
selected from a variety of templates, and the templates are already prepared
for the insertion of presentation material, including texts, pictures,
graphics, links, and even video clips.
You can also customize templates to make them fit the needs of your
presentation. Signing up is easy and
free, and getting started is a simple as picking a template and putting
information on it. The presentations can
be as simple or complex as you want them to be.
The site itself does not have a lot of design features, but you can use
items that you have designed from other sites to enhance the quality of the
prezis you create. It is somewhat
similar to PowerPoint in its format, so if you are used to that, you can easily
begin to navigate through a prezi template to create a presentation. The presentations are visually appealing, and
there are many interesting and versatile templates to choose from. I like prezi a lot. It is a great alternative to PowerPoint, which
has become boring and overused. I will
use Prezi more often to develop presentations.
I also would recommend it to anyone who presents or teaches information
on a regular basis. It would be good for
a teacher to use to develop lessons or a student who has to present a
report. Rating = 9
Popplet is another online presentation
tool. It allows you to create a
presentation board using popples, or little bubbles that contain text, images, graphics,
etc. These popples can be linked to one
another to show various relationships, and they can be adjusted by size, color,
shape, and position. The site allows you
to try out Popplet, and a quick, easy tutorial immediately pops onto the
screen. That makes it pretty easy to
mess with and understand. The main
problem with Popplet is that the free option only allows the user to create
five Popplet presentations. In order to
create unlimited presentations, you have to purchase either a yearly or monthly
plan. The cost isn’t much ($3/month or
$30/year), but it still seems like too much to pay just to be able to make
little pop boards. The presentation
style is not as versatile on Popplet as on other sites, such as Prezi, which
allow you to create as many presentations as you want for free. I didn’t notice any glitches or problems with
the program, but I did notice its limited capabilities. I can’t think of many topics that could be
presented on popple style boards with maximum effectiveness, certainly not
enough to pay money for. Although
Popplet is kind of fun and different, I would not recommend it to anyone unless
it worked for a specific type of presentation they were wanting to create. Rating = 5
Graphics:
Glogster is an online graphic/poster making
site. It is only available to educators
and their students, but I was able to create a free account using my HSU
email. It allows you to create
informational graphics or assignment boards to use to enhance teaching or
presentations. There is an instructional
tutorial that pops up when you begin your first glog. It is informative, but making the glog is
tedious and difficult until you get the hang of it. You have the option to upload text, graphics,
images, audio, and video onto the poster.
One thing that made the site difficult to use for me was that it
required downloading new software and updating settings on Adobe before it
would work. Although the finished glogs
I saw on Glogster were very cool, it seems that this type of tool would
obviously only be appropriate for use by a teacher or students of a particular
teacher, since students are supposed to have a teacher ID code to sign up. Overall, I would definitely recommend
Glogster to teachers I know, but I don’t think it would be useful to anyone
else. Rating = 7
Wordle is a site that allows you to
create word based graphics from text.
Wordles look like giant jumbles of words, but they are created by
pulling consistently used terms from chunks of text, and the size/position of
the words in the graphic are determined by their frequency of use in the text
chunk they are pulled from. To create a
wordle, you simply type or paste a chunk of text into the appropriate box, or
you can post a link to a site, and it will use the text that is on that site to
create the wordle from. Once the wordle
is created, there are a few options with regard to font, layout, and color that
you can use to edit your word graphic.
These graphics are saved to a public gallery, and they can be viewed by
the public. This would be a neat site to
use to create an appropriate graphic for a blog post, online article, or even
printable graphic to use on a newsletter or handout of some sort. Wordle is very easy to use, and it could be
useful for many things. I noticed n
glitches or problems with the program. I
would recommend it to anyone Rating = 10
Bookmarking/Note Taking:
According to its website, Diigo is
“a tool for knowledge management.” Using
a free account on this site, you can store, organize, and annotate online
material that is useful to you. Once you
create a profile, you can upload online texts and documents into your
library. You also upload a diigo toolbar
that will stay as an option on your internet toolbar. Once they are there, you can save online
resources to your library and also annotate them using highlighter tools,
notemaking tools, and more. These
bookmarked, annotated pages are able to be shared to other members of the Diigo
community. Diigo seems to me to be
relatively easy to use once you go through the hassle of setting it all
up. You may need to load certain
software to your computer for certain capability features on the toolbar to
work. It seems that Diigo would be a
really useful resource for someone who wants to keep up with and make notes on
resources they come across on the internet.
Perhaps it would be good for someone who does a lot of research or work
using online resources. I would
recommend it as a useful and even necessary tool to someone like that. However, if that’s not you, Diigo wouldn’t be
useful to you. Rating = 8
Bounce is an online application that also
allows users to annotate online information.
It takes screenshots of webpages by using url links, and then has tools
for users to mark up and annotate the screenshot copy of the site. Users can save and work collaboratively on
their pages with other users through the site Notable. This tool is neat because it can be used as an
app on phones or ipads, but it can also be used on a regular computer as well. The marked up images can be saved and
shared. This is all for free. The only problem I noticed with the site is
that it is slow to upload your screen shot.
This may have to do with software/computer capability. Similarly to Diigo, I think this tool would
only be useful to certain people. If I
knew someone with that type of need, I would definitely recommend this app to
them. Otherwise, it doesn’t seem that
useful. Rating = 7
Surveys/Quizzes
Survey Monkey is a site that allows users
to create surveys that are accessible to anyone using a code. The site has a basic profile, which is free,
or profiles can be upgraded for better options with purchase. Users can create a variety of surveys with
different designs and question types.
These surveys are then sent via email or can be accessed through weblinks. This could be posted on Facebook, on twitter,
on a blog, or sent through email to a desired survey base. Results are then accessible to the user and
can be viewed using a variety of analysis tools, such as charts, graphs,
etc. It was very quick to create a
survey, and the functionality of the site ensures that users can create a wide
variety of types of surveys and make them accessible to whoever they wish
through a variety of formats. The main
page is very informative and has troubleshooting and FAQ links to make the site
more user friendly. I noticed no glitches or problems. I would recommend this
site to anyone. Rating = 10
Quizlet is a site that is similar to Survey Monkey,
but it allows people to create quizzes or quiz like study materials, such as
flash cards. It was very quick and easy
to set up an account. The basic profile
is free, and other, better profile options are available at a fee. From there, the user just begins to create
quiz cards by building a new “set.” You
just title the set and type the information that is to be included on each side
of the quiz “card.” Images and or data
can also be uploaded onto the cards.
Teachers have access to more functional accounts, so this would be an
especially useful tool for teachers.
Also, quizzes can be made accessible to anyone, and groups/”classes” can
be created to create collaborative opportunities to learn and share
information. While using the site, I
noticed no glitches or other problems.
The only negative thing I thought was that there aren’t a lot of
formatting options for the quizzes.
Perhaps purchasing a more functional account would result in having more
options to create differently formatted quizzes. I would recommend this site to teachers and
also students who need to create flashcard style quizzes to study for
exams. Rating = 9
