According to this blog post, over 90% of the people surveyed do not  know what a web browser is. The Wikipedia definition is:
“A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content.[2] Hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. A web browser can also be defined as an application software or program designed to enable users to access, retrieve and view documents and other resources on the Internet.

Although browsers are primarily intended to access the World Wide Web, they can also be used to access information provided by web servers in private networks or files in file systems.

The major web browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera.”

If you experience problems with a Web 2.0 tool like Blabberize, Animoto, Glogster EDU, or Voki, the problem may lie in the browser you are using to access the site. Last week my students experienced problems accessing and using Voki. After a few students logged on, the other students had problems accessing the site. After discussing the situation with Scott Floyd, Technology Specialist at  WOISD, he suggested using a different browser, specifically Safari. We generally use Firefox for most of our internet access. I discovered two years ago while using Glogster EDU, the site gave us fits when using Firefox as the web browser. I downloaded Google Chrome to the computers, and when we used it for accessing Glogster EDU our problems disappeared.

To speed up the process in the computer lab, I have also learned that making the web application we are using that week as the home page sure helps students get the most out of their time. It is simple to do and saves me a great deal of useless frustration trying to get them to type the url correctly! The short video below demonstrates how to create the homepage of your choice.