Welcome to another mid-week post highlighting another great web application. This week I focus on one collaborative tool allowing you to share, contribute, and manipate text, sketches, maps, and images across the internet. It does not require a log in and should be easy to use in the classroom. If you like Ether Pad, then CoSketch will also be a great tool for you and your classroom. Thanks for the visit, and please remember to check out my 21centuryedtech Wiki and follow me on Twitter at @mjgormans. Have a great end to your week! – Mike (mgorman@sacs.k12.in.us)
How about a tool that allows people to collaborate for free online, using a multipurpose whiteboard? CoSketch is an amazing multi-user online whiteboard tool designed to give you the ability to quickly visualize and share your ideas as images. Anything you paint will show up for all other users in real time. Invite collaborators to join you in your artistic effort! Neeed to archive the collaborative effort? Just click once to save a sketch as an image for embedding on forums, blogs, or other digital files. Best of all, there is no registration needed. Like the name implies, users can collaborate using different draw and shape tools. Better yet, they can type messages in a collaborative fashion. The originator can pick from several backgrounds, upload a picture as a background, or use maps found in Google Maps as the background. In fact, the integration with a live Google Map may just be one of CoSketch’s most inovative features. Imagine the teaching possibilities as backgrounds can be integrated with text and drawinmgs. This clever collaborative tool also includes a chat window so all users can chat as they sketch, type, and use various shapes and stamps! Whether you want to brainstorm an idea, share a sketch, collaborate on a drawing, mix pictures with text, or import a background and share, CoSketch is a tool you want included in your resource collection of online collaborative tools.
Again, thanks for the read and have fun trying a new tool guaranteed to enrich the twenty-fist century classroom! Please follow me on twitter at @mjgormans, I will return the favor and we can continue to learn from each other – Mike
21 st Century Educational Technology and Learning 
Good article but there is so more much to learn about this that its hard to keep up. http://bit.ly/learning-software <<<< This site helped me a lot – Great info .. Its almost like going to school.
Thanks for stopping by and I do hope you return. I always hope the information I provide helps out in some way! – Mike
Great little tool. I literally just googled and found this site linking to it, used it to share some homework help and was so beneficial to write out the math equations properly instead of trying to text them.
And with no registration! Brilliant! Makes it so fast and easy. That’s good design.
Cheers,
I agree that coSketch is a lot of fun! I am so glad you found it useful! thank you for the kind words and please continue to9 return! – Mike