371.3 NECC08: Wonderful World of Wikis

Adam Frey, co-founder of Wikispaces and Vicki Davis, Cool Cat Teacher
Here is the link to the information from the presentation
Overflowing room…people were standing against the wall...laptoppers were sitting all over the floor!
They set up a back channel for everyone...it is place for participants to chat while they talk! Also , they took questions from the back channel crowd...more about back channeling in a future post when I get some info together!

Frey asked and hands were raised
50% of audience are teachers
About half never used a wiki and about half of that group don’t know what they are
They want to know what it is & how to start

1.Webpage with edit button
Standard..but can be changed
Removes barriers to publishing on the web

2.About history…every change is recorded
More open than closed usually (ours in my circle aren't really open...yet!)
There is a history tab to see all these changes

3. for groups essentially…collaboration for groups large and small
Ease of editing makes this possible discussion forums helps with communication

4. monitoring --see what is going on without going there
Can be emailed or rss subscription

5. easy!
If it is hard you won’t use…easy to start…no cost…doesn’t require email or signup
Doesn’t need fancy computers

Wikipedia…causes a bad feeling
Wikis don’t have to suffer same issues
Can be locked down or not, behind firewall or not

“Bring all things together”—glue in like a scrapbook…[I consider them a "parking lot" for information, resources]


Student accounts system easy from them…special stuff for teachers…

Vicki Davis

Project-based learning environment is where she works
Global projects examples
Flatclassroomproject
Horizonproject2008
Digiteen

History tab records who is doing what...
In classroom her wikis are not open…students are protected

Wiki-centered classroom
She has outline online…she embeds student files on her wiki
Assignments and templates

Create a page and create template…under manage space
Better to name pages without spaces

She tags assignments “turning” –work to be graded.
The optional note box she has them use for more info about the assignment turn in, etc.

The bottom feeders can be tracked and they HAVE to participate…

Netvibes –uses this for her personal learning network…it is on atomic learning

Connect to the world…changed their world view

QUESTIONS/Back Channel

Override…two ppl editing…can be done, but you may not want to!
If same word is changed last one saved overrides

Edit wikipedia---how to do it responsibly

**Technopersonal skills are as important as interpersonal skills—administrators often ignore!

Lots of student monitoring—

Permission settings---manage space---permissions; protected can be viewed ; private only invited can see

Lock assignment pages...Vicki does work with administration to deal with technopersonal skill issue

Adam answered:
Blog— is journal format…opinion, 1st person writing
Wiki –evolving content due to changing..for facts, assignments collaboration tool…

Mariaknee.com
kinder teacher who has numbers project (she also was awarded a prize by SIGMS for her project)

004.67 Student Participation on the Web

Please note that I did a little rearranging of the links on my blogroll. I have now pulled the samples of student responses together under the heading "Student Participation."

I currently do not have wiki examples, but will!

I welcome any additions that show the kinds of things students are doing out there. I know there so many more great examples that are behind the walls we collectively find necessary to use in order to get the privilege of having students participate...some day, those efforts will be available freely. I have faith!

371.33 Blogging Class At Region 4: Friday Afternoon Fun!

A wonderful group of teachers, librarians and other school people are spending the afternoon learning about blogs and wikis at the Regional Service Center.

After doing a little research on their own, their comments about the experience included:

Cool Cat Teacher: using blogs, wikis to help our teachers and our students do lots of things...has helpful ino on how-to

TeenLibrarian: urban fiction for teens..short stories about teens, comments about the books and stories

Just One More Book: used author list looking for particular authors especially for middle school...not too many choices, but idea of podcasts was intriguing.

Library of Congress: upcoming events, podcasts of different authors, events, blog

Nelson Central: looking at the different classes, very simple lessons about letters for very young children that she could use with her very young students

Kathy Schrock: downloading unitedstreaming onto i-pods...using the medium in a different format

Wiki thoughts:

One of the groups present was from a district where their teachers use wikis for a variety of things: online discussion, share information between teachers about subject areas, training, communication between team leaders, etc...post changes and edits of information,post response for homework on wiki page.

LibrarySuccess Best Practices: good stuff!

We did spend the last part of the time looking at how to create a blog and seeing how "ridiculously" easy it is!

FYI:

Some other blogging "class" notes to review other thoughts...

July 10th

June 10th

and if you have any doubts about using technology with kids, review this post and watch the video (it wouldn't work for our class today so I am making it available for the students should they check here!)

371.3 Lesson Plans: The Wiki Way

Came across this wiki full of lesson plans and other resources this week.

It offers users templates to create lessons and activities and then a place to "park" them so others can adapt and use them. It includes some textbook type materials on many subjects and full-text novels from Project Gutenberg as well.

Has very comprehensive FAQs covering its purpose, history (was originally Sun Microsystem's Global Education and Learning Community GELC), and how to join, contribute and use.

Subjects include the arts, career & technical education, foreign languages,
health, language arts, math, science, and social studies. In browsing thru the language arts portion, I came across an interesting price comparison chart to use with Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry...comparing Depression prices with today's costs...easily adaptable to similar books or cross-curricular activity in math. Here is a little "movie" that displays information about force and motion from the science section.

Of course, Curriki (don't you just love that name!) isn't unique in providing support materials for teachers and their lessons...there are plenty of other great sources...Blue Web'N, Education World, FREE, Kathy Schrock's Guide, TeachersFirst. But it will be interesting to follow the growth of this particular format, I think.