Twiddla is the second collaborative whiteboard application that I tried today. Twiddla received a lot of press this weekend at the SXSW (South by Southwest) Conference. Twiddla has some very good features that are potentially useful for educators and students. Twiddla allows users to collaborate on the creation of and editing of images.

Twiddla’s most interesting feature is the ability to mark-up websites in real time. Typically if you want to point out something on a webpage to another person you have to take a screen capture, mark the screen capture, and then email the screen capture. Twiddla lets users share and mark a website in real time because the webpage operates inside Twiddla’s browser.

Applications for Educators
Twiddla’s real-time web page marking feature is useful for teachers that are trying to help a group of students navigate a web page. A teacher can quickly set up a conference on Twiddla (simply email invitations to students) and walk students through the web page. The teacher can draw or highlight on a web page the links or features the students need to use.
Twiddla is useful for students to use on their own. Using Twiddla students can collaborate on the creation of visual aids for presentations. Students working collaboratively on research assignments may want to use Twiddla to show their classmates information they are considering using.

Here is a screen shot of an image I made using Twiddla.