Twiddla - Very cool team whiteboard!

Last night I was searching through my bookmarks to find some screencast tutorials and found myself at Liz B. Davis' blog The Power of Educational Technology. Scrolling through the posts on that page, I stumbled across one regarding Twitter as her "playground". It caught my eye, so I read on and found a nifty Web2.0 application called Twiddla,which is much like a playground itself.

Twiddla is a web-based collaborative whiteboard. Not much new there because I have seen a couple of these before. They were "cute", but I didn't see a huge use for them, so I was a bit skeptical. However, after trying Twiddla - I'm sold!

Twiddla offers a great whiteboard platform with a variety of tools unlike others I've seen. However, there are several features that really impressed me. First, you can conduct BOTH audio and text-based chatting within your Twiddla session, which is so easy to set up. Second, you have the option of saving snapshots of the whiteboard, which can then be used as images on the whiteboard. Additionally, you can upload images as well. Finally, with a free account, your sessions are archived and that includes the chat! With just a click, I was able to go back in and re-join the test session I created. I loved that feature especially.

This particular tool will definitely be something that I'll include in future professional development sessions. I know the students will enjoy using it, too.

Podcasting in Plain English

I admit it. I get all excited when they publish something new. This time it's Podcasting in Plain English.