Washington DC, is a big place – the buildings are big, the roads are big, the sidewalks are big, but the Washington Convention Centre is bigger than big!

It takes up 3 blocks and is over 4 storeys tall. It’s spacious, well planned and state of the art! I can’t imagine it full of people, but have been led to believe it will be by Monday when the NECC conference begins for real.

I am here early on Saturday morning to take part in Edubloggercon, described as a fringe event to NECC proper. It’s an “unconference” organized and attended by bloggers and Classroom2.0 participants.

First up is a “Web2.0  Smackdown!” led by the pumped and exuberant CoolCatTeacher herself, Vicki Davis! The smackdown is a bit like a UK TeachMeet on uppers! Its fast, very fast – each presenter has 3 minutes to share a web2.0 tool that they use with their class. Much cheering, clapping and woo-ooing goes on – it’s loud and fun!

Here are the apps that caught my imagination on the day:

QR reader - scan and read mobile barcodes (QR-Codes)

Take pic of bar code – taken to web page, domain or website OR ON YOUR PHONE

Launch the picture – email to yourself

Take photo of the code

Google - Similar searches

Go to – More, even more, labs

“similar searches” – eg similar images search

pick an image that I am looking for – click Similar images – just like the image I picked

Images –Comp fight + Flickr storm

Look for related tags, related photos and can custo

mise even further options to customise, refine searches

flickr search tool

Searches text

Flickr stream of pictures for students to use = keep images on a tray = one URL to  link to all of the photos

Cover It Live - Live Blogging tool that allows you to broadcast live commentary to your readers.

Everything that is typed into the event is kept

Back stream, Chatroom,

Use in classroom for reflective pieces = panel function

Fur.ly

Fur.ly allows you to create one URL from a bunch of links. Just enter your desirable choices, and fur.ly will do the rest (Slideshow navigation look & feel).

A series of web pages like a tour for kids to follow.

Start at one page and move through the linked pages.

Issuu.com

Takes any sort of document and turns it into an online book.

Turns pages like a book

Embed codes – to add to wiki/blog etc

Twoogle

Twoogle provides an easy way to search Twitter and Google simultaneously, from the same site, displaying its results side by side.

Type in something and get google result and twitter result on same page

Tag Galaxy

Visualization tool. Browse through Flickr photos in 3D with this flash application.

Type in tag, brings in photos onto a globe

Generate conversations within the classroom

Tineye.com

Reverse image search engine.

Search engine for images

Tracing images and where they have come from

Egs of photo hopping

Noteflight

An online application that lets you display, edit, print and play back music notation with professional quality, right in your web browser. 

Play the music

Collaborate with others

Use with Jam studio – put in chords – links, backing tracks, instruments, kids can add own voice, raps etc

Opus09.ning.com

Whew!! heaps there to investigate over the next little while!

Have you used any of these applications with your class? Please, let me know what you’ve done  - thanks

 ;-)

PS – Here is the live stream that happened during the event:

Coveritlive – Edubloggercon We2.0 Smackdown

Thanks Kristin Hokanson

And Jim Gates pointed out that I

“… missed one. The wolfram Alpha/Google extension for firefox. When you search Google it automatically searches WolframAlpha to show both ersults. An amazing search engine, that Wolfram Alpha.

Screenshot: http://twitpic.com/8kfna
Extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12006

Thanks Jim and Kristin – now we are up to date!