Welcome to Section 2 of our course
"The World of Wikis!"
This second part of the semester will take us down a new path!
A path that leads to more collaboration--
more cooperative learning---
and more opportunities to create differentiated instruction and visual learning---all with the goal of helping foster literacy, and learning, for our students.
Don't worry if you have barely heard of the word, 'Wiki'. Here is a taste of the excitement that awaits you when you download session 5.
Good luck and take plenty of notes because I don't want to miss any of your ideas, excitement, or insights when you post your comments!
If you're eager to get started, but still have some apprehension then maybe some tutorials might help. I've added some beneath the blog tutorials on the left.
You may also read past participants' comments:
Have fun!
DF
Backup copies of sessions can be found on Authorstream.com Just do a search for edc921 and view the appropriate session.
8 comments:
Wiki are huge. I would love to try this out with my class. I teach chemistry every year. My teaching is constantly being affected by what my past students have asked or had difficulty with in the past. If I created a Wiki, each year my students could benefit from the successes or problems that previous students had.
I wonder if I am biting off too much to consider using wiki's for my deliverable #3?
As I looked around my corner of the reading room today at all the piles of assessments and reports, I thought of how lovely it would be to have one common paperless place for everyone to access this information. As I submitted end of the year scores and reports, I went from our network reading drive for scores, to school and grade level folders in a different file for records and PLP's, to yet a different data system for RTI interventions, to a international data base for Reading Recovery records. Our district has excel spreadsheets for every school which has scores for every student, yet only one person can enter data at a time or it becomes read only, or people make unneccessary copies so we can't find anything. I was trying to wrap my mind around how we could utilize something simple like a wiki where we could search a student name and get all the info in one place. I may try something like this for my Deliverable 3 as well. Is it just me, or does the name Davis pop up often recently? I loved the town website, it was like a cross of Amazon ratings and the yellow pages! I guess I wouldn't want to join the gym in that town. Vicki Davis was pretty clear and straighforward, I think I got a little intimidated at the extent to which she had the students working with the wiki. Baby steps!
I did not know that you can see on a wiki how many times it has been changed and you can go back to previous versions. A good thing to show students and a great tool for editing since you can always just go back to a previous version with one click.
Before this class I knew that a wiki meant a source document that could be edited by multiple people, but I always assumed that it was multiple people in a particular organization or with professional experience in a field. Now, I understand that a wiki can be created by anyone and in fact I am beginning to think about incorporating the task of creating a wiki into the multidisciplinary lesson I am working on with the music teacher. I know I was going to have the students use Diigo 9a social networking web site and tool) to research Indian instruments, but in the end the students were just going to create a PowerPoint or web site. I’m beginning to think having the students create a wiki would even be a better idea.
My favorite reading this week was the one “minds on Fire”. I particularly liked finding out about the model of social learning as opposed to Cartesian learning. The research surrounding the social model is interesting and makes sense, but I wonder if the learning that is gained in the social context is as in depth as the traditional model. I have no doubt that better understanding comes from social learning, but I am not sure if the same breadth is able to be covered by all members in a group. Also, I wonder whether the amount learned ends up being equitable amongst all group members. If we employ group learning frequently, will the self-chosen leaders always be the teachers and the followers always ask the questions? I also wonder about the amount of misinformation and unintentional “translation” of facts that comes from social learning versus the traditional model. It’s like playing telephone with learning. Will the message at the end be the same as the one that was shared in the beginning? As this social model of learning continues to grow, especially in the wake of the Web 2.0, it will be interesting to see its successes and shortcomings as we look at our students skill sets 10-15 years from now.
to Mrs. Limoges:
I appreciate all the places you have to store your files. I too have a local drive at school for my files, a network location for PLP graphs, an iplan location for official PLP records, and the like. This is all in addition to documents on my own web site and flash drive. I have recently decided to start using Google docs to save all my files. I love the fact that I don't have to worry about having my flash drive and I can easily share them with colleagues and even edit them simultaneously. Finally, google docs has the ability to roll-back to previous versions in case someone makes a mistake. If you have the time, I seriously suggest checking it out. Cloud computing is the future:)
To Mrs. Borges:
Thanks! I will definitley look into the google docs. Our spreadsheets have been copied and unintentionally changed so many times we are looking for pieces of class scores everywhere. We keep trying new things, but still have to keep up the old ones. It will be such a happy day when everyone can get on the same page and assimilate everything!
I was so inspired by the comments that Vicki Davis made in her video conference presentation. The ideas and the positive effects that wikis have had on her classroom is nothing short of amazing. Although I feel that I understand the concept of wikis, I am still wondering how to create one. Are they really that easy to create? I am so looking forward to implementing a wiki on my team or for my school. I just have to figure out how to fit one into what we do...
Sorry I was the last comment...Might help if I use my name...
Kim
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