WebKlipper

The Web 2.0 tool that I looked into and thought would be very helpful and useful within the classroom is WebKlipper.  WebKlipper allows the teacher and the students to personalize classroom notes.  Within doing this, the students and teacher would be able to add illustrations, such as highlights, drawings, annotations and create sticky notes.  Not only can you use WebKlipper for your personal use and create your own notes, but others and yourself can share their personalized notes for others to view.  This tool is not only easy to use, but brings about several positive aspects for a students use, in and outside of the classroom.  This tool allows creative thinking, engagement of learning and even group activity.
WebKlipper can most definitely be used to assist students with disabilities.  This can be done by this tool acting as a great visual component of the classroom, such as if the teacher used it on the smartboard, while reading a short article, summarization of an article, key, important facts of an article/essay/reading, etc.  Such a visual oriented tool is great for those who are visual learners, students with different information processing disabilities (breaks information down into key or core components) or even those that need things to be read aloud to them, as the teacher reads to the class what she is highlighting and reads the particular sticky notes she may put on the side.  This program also helps students work on different sensory and motor skills, if asked to come use the touch screen, on the smart board, in whole class discussion and work, while hightlighting or creating notes, with this tool.
One particular way that I would use the WebKlipper in the classroom is, by having the students work in small groups of about 4-5 in each group, with each group at a different computer.  This allows the students to work together in using the different illustrations and personalization tools within this software. The assignment I would have the students do, would be to summarize an article, by hightlighting the key ideas/words/phrases and take notes to give a final summary of an article.  This tool could also be very helpful on working on correct grammar and sentence structure, by using the hightlight tool and note taking option to correct examples of essays with gramatical errors.  With the allowance of making sticky notes and highlighting, it enables the students to better use critical thinking in choosing important areas to hightlight, crucial annotations or drawings to take on the side.  Within students delving into critical thinking, it can be especially useful for small group work for students with disabilities, to gain perspectives from fellow group members and learn to work as a collaborative whole.  Some students with disabilities feel left out or categorized as a student with a disability.  To avoid such labels or terms in an inclusive classroom, such small group work helps the student to attain more social interactions with his/her peers and have all students gain awareness of not just students weaknesses, but most importantly, their strengths.

WebKlipper