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Summer is already half-way over, and it’s time to start moving towards my goals. I am lucky that my courses at Walden have started moving me in the right direction. One of my goals for the year is to “Model digital-age work and learning”. For this standard, I need to develop a fluency in technological systems and transfer my knowledge to my students. I have already done the hard work, creating blogs, wikis and web sites as assignments in my classes. This blog has been an amazing learning experience. It has taught me how to organize my thinking to publish it online. My next step for this goal involves the creation of a classroom blog. I would like to create a blog for weekly discussions where my students can meet after school to discuss our content. A teacher-friend of mine from Seattle has a great sample site for this idea. Check out Mrs. Fitz’s web site “You Are What You Blog". Her site inspires me to try this technique with my English classes next year. I just need to work on getting past our tricky filtering program.
For my other goal, to “Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments”, I plan to create poetry wikis in class to teach digital publishing. Like Will Richardson points out, “everyone together is smarter than anyone else” (2009, p. 57). I am excited to see my students working collaboratively to analyze and synthesize poetry. This goal will require more assistance. Richardson’s Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom can be a useful resource; I have been rereading it this week. I am trying to find sample student wikis online so I can get an idea about how these sites are set up. So far, I am struggling to find any useable samples. Can anyone help me?
Resources:
Richardson, W., (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for the classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press
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Kris,
ReplyDeleteI too wish to utilize a blog in my classes but am concerned about the fact I only have six computers in my classroom and those are actually designated for my yearbook students. We do have a media center which has enough computers for individual students in each class, but one must plan far ahead and well to have access every day. How do you plan to use the blog? Will the students need access every day?
Thanks for the address to Mrs. Fitz's blog site. I will surely check it out as I too need ideas specifically for my English classes.
The wiki idea I also like as I used one last year with my yearbook staff. Ours was particularly for ad sales last year, but this year (before school, ah, so much to do) I plan to rework it and use it for all the elements of yearbook, especially communication. The issue I have with our wiki is that the discussion tab/page does not facilitate clear communication or collaboration. Each comment is simply linked to the comments added to it. The separate discussions cannot be seen easily as ours at Walden. I am thinking that since we access Walden through a web site and not a wiki, it may be difficult to have such detail in a wiki. Let me if and how you have discussions on your wiki. I truly need to upgrade mine.
I will send you an invitation to my yearbook wiki so you can peruse it. It may give you an idea or two.
Have a great weekend,
Steph
Kris, thanks for the great links. Really cool resources. I don't know why, but I love the idea of using wikis. They are a perfect tool for collaborative learning and all teachers should try to take advantage of them. That being said, I haven't seen any student examples of a wiki either. I'm wondering if they are private so that only the students can access them and as a result they don't come up in searches? I have many colleges who use blogs, but wikis seem to be too intense for some. Hopefully more people will see the potential in wikis and we'll start seeing more examples popping up.
ReplyDelete-Matt DeAmaral