Backchannel Tools

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Backchannel Tools

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Wakelet (free)
https://wakelet.com/
Wakelet : Save, organize and present multimedia content with your students, teachers and learning communities.
The Wakelet platform and all of it's features are completely free to use
At Wakelet, we're working to change the way people find, organize and share information. In a world of algorithmically-driven content, Wakelet puts people first, helping them organize and find the most relevant, authoritative and compelling content from across the web.

Voxer
https://www.voxer.com/
Voxer makes it simple for friends, family and colleagues to talk from anywhere in the world, whenever it’s convenient.
Communicate in the fastest, and most efficient manner there is - instant voice.
You can hear messages as people speak, or listen later if you are unavailable.
Alongside voice, send text, photos and share your location.
Broadcast messages to up to 500 individuals or team contacts.
Use your iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 8 or desktop to communicate.
Pick a chat to listen and respond to live voice without being in the app.
Hook up your wired or Bluetooth headsets to respond back hands-free.
Turn on loud, repetitive alerts for messages when you’re in noisy environments.
When you are at your desk, listen and respond to your contacts from a desktop.
Talk across countries, wireless carriers, or data networks at no additional charge.
Data is sent through encrypted connections and stored in a secure cloud.

Google Drawings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Drawings
Google Drawings is a free, web-based diagramming software developed by Google.
It allows users to collaborate and work together in real time to create flowcharts, organisational charts, website wireframes, mind maps, concept maps, and other types of diagrams.
Google Drawings is also available as a Chrome app that works offline, available from the Chrome Web Store.
Google Drawings is hosted within Google Drive and all files created with the application are by default saved to Google Drive. It was originally introduced on April 12, 2010 as Google Docs drawings, a tool for making drawings in Google Docs.

AnswerGarden
https://answergarden.ch/
AnswerGarden is a minimalistic feedback tool. Use it in the classroom as an educational tool or at work as a creative brainstorming tool. Post it in a tweet or you can embed it on your website or blog to use it as a poll or guestbook.
You create an AnswerGarden by entering a topic on the Create New AnswerGarden-page.
As your AnswerGarden draws attention people will start posting their answers to your question, either by entering their own answers or by clicking on and submitting existing answers. These are then represented in your AnswerGarden in the form of a growing word cloud.

Socrative
https://socrative.com/
Socrative
We believe big change is possible in education through small improvements. We started Socrative to make teachers' lives simpler while making teaching more fulfilling and learning more visible.
We're more than a student response system. We're a window into learning, and we see big things on the horizon. Above all else, we are educators, and we are passionate about building tools that help teachers make a difference.

Backchannel Chat : Live Chat for Classrooms
http://backchannelchat.com/
Backchannel Chat : Live Chat for Classrooms
Backchannel Chat is designed for educational discussions, it provides all the tools an educator could need to facilitate online discussions.
Easily control and moderate your live class chat. Our modern web 2.0 styled chat rooms will engage and transform your classroom.
We have released a Backchannel Chat application for your iPhone or iPad, download now from the App Store.
We provide a comprehensive set of features for schools to govern the backchannel chat discussion rooms that get created inside of Schoology.
Learn how to embed a banner image to the top of your chat room to set the context and personalize the experience.
Learn how to embed your chat room into your website. Visitors can watch the updates in real time.
Backchannel Chat for Google Apps now supports deployments where teachers and students are in seperate domains.
BackChannel Chat Released in the Edmodo App Store
Download the Apple iPhone/iPad free App

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FlipGrid
https://info.flipgrid.com/
FlipGrid
Teachers create grids of short discussion-style questions that students respond to through recorded videos. Flipgrid boosts community and social presence in face-to-face, hybrid, and online classrooms.
Give your students a voice.
You can create up to four* grids with a Flipgrid account. Grids can be classes, sections, groups of students, research groups, faculty groups, or any collection of users interested in a common strand of questions. Each grid can hold an unlimited number of questions, and each question can hold an unlimited number of responses.
Questions are short, text-based prompts (think Twitter™) that can include basic formatting (e.g., bold, italic) and links to websites or documents.
Unlimited questions per grid. Unlimited response videos per question.

Flaskio [To Do Lists]
https://flask.io/
Flaskio
Create and share simple to do lists. No sign up. Nothing to download. Just add tasks without the pain. Simple.
I can see this having a use in classrooms with students and also CPD with teachers ... maybe running parallel with a backchannel tool.

BackChannel Chat
http://backchannelchat.com/
BackChannel Chat
Real Time Chat for Classrooms
BackChannel Chat is designed for educational discussions, it provides all the tools an educator could need to facilitate online discussions.
With more and more technology being incorporated into the classroom, we wanted to provide a chat / discussion tool suited for the classroom. That means no advertising and not collecting personal information from students.
Our product works well with tablets and we have dedicated mobile applications on the way.
BackChannel Chat makes us of modern web technologies, if your using a modern web browser such as IE10, Chrome, Safari or Firefox you’ll be using websockets, but if your on something a little older, we’ll still make that work.

ZippyChat
https://zippychat.com/
ZippyChat
Zippy Chat quickly creates permanent chat rooms, allowing you to get down to chatting immediately. It's instant messaging made easy. Just create a chat room, send your chat room's unique url to your friends and begin chatting!
Zippy Chat's chat rooms are permanent and private, and stay on the server even when they're not in use. You can post your chat room's url on the internet, and the chat room will still be working a month later.

SoapBox
https://www.gosoapbox.com/
SoapBox is a controlled digital space, designed to improve student engagement by breaking down the barriers students face when deciding whether or not to participate in class, and gives teachers a concrete assessment of student comprehension, in real time.

HootCourse
http://hootcourse.com/
A HootCourse is an online classroom. And then some.
It also looks like this might be useful as a backchannel tool
Instead of cumbersome forums or complicated lesson-plan formats, HootCourse uses a combination of the most popular social networks and blogging platforms to provide a new type of online classroom.
HootCourses are built on tweets and status updates in real-time.
There's no particular structure to them, at least no more than a classroom with chairs and a blackboard; they're a simple construct that lets a teacher and pupil interact.
Most online learning solutions have the same problem. They try to be a virtual teacher instead of a virtual classroom.
HootCourse sticks solely to the role of classroom. It's a virtual environment built to facilitate the free-flowing dialogue of an educational setting. Like a real-world classroom, it leaves teaching materials and format to the teacher.
Students and teachers can sign in with either Facebook or Twitter.

Nota : Casual Collaboration
https://notainc.com/
Nota : Casual Collaboration.
Mash your ideas and media together with friends in a dynamic whiteboard wiki. Using photos, videos, and other web content you can instantly create brainstorms, presentations, scrapbooks, and enjoy an interactive chat with more than 50 friends.
Nota is a unique, cutting-edge collaborative web platform that allows users to create, share and collaborate on presentations and virtually any other form of online material. Using Nota’s proprietary toolset, users can instantly integrate text, video, maps, clip art, photos from web album or on the local computer, or license-free images from Flickr, and material from an ever-expanding array of sources. Users can then instantly embed their work in Facebook or blogs, and can share and collaborate with friends.

Shamblesguru 'BackChannel Tools' Video Picks on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3E451ABECD5EFB72

Sync In
http://sync.in/
Sync.in is a web based word processor for people to collaborate in real-time.
This is an Etherpad clone ... BUT they have enhanced it to include a cool desktop client .. one of the options that has evolved the application
When multiple people edit the same document simultaneously, any changes are instantly reflected on everyone's screen.
The result is a new and productive way to collaborate and conference on text documents, useful for meeting notes, brainstorming, project planning, drafting sessions, training, and more.

Nota
https://notainc.com/
Nota is a unique, cutting-edge collaborative web platform that allows users to create, share and collaborate on presentations and virtually any other form of online material.
Using Nota’s proprietary toolset, users can instantly integrate text, video, maps, clip art, photos from web album or on the local computer, or license-free images from Flickr, and material from an ever-expanding array of sources.
Users can then instantly embed their work in Facebook or blogs, and can share and collaborate with friends.

WallWisher
https://padlet.com/
WallWisher
The ability to add postits stickers to a wall .. they can contain text, hyperlinks, images and .... Could be used as a backchannel tool.

Twiddla
https://www.twiddla.com/
Twiddla calls itself a web-based meeting playground.
Not only is it a fun way to swap ideas about a website or image ... but also useful as a backchannel tool in meetings for sharing.

Etherpad
https://etherpad.org/
Etherpad
EtherPad is the first web-based word processor that allows people to work together in really real-time.
When multiple people edit the same document simultaneously, any changes are instantly reflected on everyone's screen.
The result is a new and productive way to collaborate on text documents, useful for meeting notes, drafting sessions, education, team programming, and more.
Note that Etherpad has been purchased by Google ... and is now being made available as open source.
It is not known how long this original Etherpad will stay online ... but there are alternatives .. see below

WiZiQ
https://www.wiziq.com/
WiZiQ enables teachers and learners to collaborate through ...
* Virtual Classes * Online Tests * Educational Content * Contact Network

Scribblar
http://www.scribblar.com/
Scribblar
Simple, effective online collaboration Multi-user whiteboard, live audio, image collaboration, text-chat and more ...

Chatzy
http://www.chatzy.com/
Why Chatzy is a good alternative to traditional chat sites as well as ICQ, Yahoo, MSN and AOL Messenger:
* Chatzy has no registration steps - your friends can join instantly
* Chatzy is free and has no popup ads
* Chatzy does not require any installation on your computer (= no spyware)
* Chatzy works on any PC, with any language and through corporate firewalls
* Chatzy is simple and easy to use

Alternatives to Etherpad
https://alternativeto.net/software/etherpad/
Alternatives to Etherpad listed at "Alternative to"
Note that some of the alternatives given do not have the real time sychronous function.
But "Alternative To" is also a social network where you can vote on the alternatives to help fine-tune them.

Google Wave as a Back-Channel Tool
http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/infolit/googlewave/
Google Wave as a Back-Channel Tool
At the time of posting this message I'm not aware of any teachers using Google Wave as a Back-Channel tool in their classrooms.
I do suspect that as Wave evolved and teachers become more confident that there might be a place for it to do this task.

Five Platforms for Classroom Back-Channel Chat
https://bit.ly/aM5Bq6
Five Platforms for Classroom Back-Channel Chat
The following are five free platforms that can be used for hosting a back-channel chat.

Backchanneling with Twitter
http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/ict/whereru/
Backchanneling with Twitter
Popular with audiences to create backchannels at technology conferences.
Audience members add an event hashtag to their tweets ... e.g. #TEDxBKK for the conference http://TEDxBKK.com ... anyone can then run a Twitter search to review all the backchannel tweets related to that event.

Backchannel on Shambles
http://shambles.net/tinychat
Backchannel on Shambles using embedded TinyChat

Backchannel Tools
http://www.shambles.net/pages/staff/BCtools/
In Wikipedia "Backchannel" is defined as ...
... the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside live spoken remarks. The term was coined in the field of Linguistics to describe listeners' behaviours during verbal communication, Victor Yngve 1970.
The term "backchannel" generally refers to online conversation about the topic or the speaker. Occasionally backchannel provides audience members a chance to fact-check the presentation.
This area of Shambles lists some of the tools that can be used to Backchannel in a meeting, conference, talk .. or your classroom.
There is a related area on Shambles that gives advice and tips about Backchannelling at http://bit.ly/backchanneltips