I recently spoke at a conference where the anticipated attendance was 16,000. There were 30 laptops set up with 60 seats and then overflow seating for another 40 people. I gave 5 presentations over 2 days. I didn’t know before I got there how many people I was going to see and now that I’m home, I still don’t know. But I can tell you that at least 10 people asked me if I had a handout I could give them. There were also many attendees that commented about it. I was grateful to see this Tweet from NJ educator Brian McLaughlin.

I think sometimes as educators, we are accustomed to getting everything on paper. But what really happens to it? We stick it in a folder, we throw it away, or it gets lost in a an ever-growing pile of papers collecting on our desk.

Here are some tools that I’ve been using and have seem some other educators use to share information and resources during presentations and professional development sessions:

Google Docs
Click on Share — Publish as Webpage and Google Docs will assign you a unique public URL (link) for your document. You still will be the only one that has rights to edit your Google Doc, unless you invite Collaborators, but you can use this feature to share a digital agenda, list of links, or anything that you would have printed out in the past. Here’s a sample… http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddn2z86w_3dn2hs4fj

http://www.scribd.com/
On Scribd, you can upload a Word or PDF file and they will convert it into a web document. This way your attendees have access to it on their computers. All you have to do is share the URL  with them. Here’s a sample…http://www.scribd.com/doc/17245218/Discovery-Education-Whats-New-2009

Wikis
http://www.wikispaces.com/
http://sites.google.com
http://pbworks.com/
Wikis will allow you to embed more than one type of content on them. Like I did for my presentations at the NJEA Convention, I included links to websites, embedded videos and gadgets to PollEverywhere and Slideshare. These are pieces of information you really can’t print out. Here’s a sample… http://njea-tis-09.wikispaces.com/shoestring-did-you-say-that-was-free

Glogster
Glogster advertises itself as “a creative, dynamic, and innovative digital outlet that captures learner’s excitement for online creations, keeps learners engaged in course content, and makes teaching and learning more fun.” This is great, but to summarize, it allows us to provide our attendees (whether they are students or educators) with a digital resource rather than a printed one. Here’s a sample… http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/

Wallwisher
Wallwisher defines itself as a “web page where people actually post messages.” The great part about this is that you don’t need an account with Wallwisher in order to post a note on a Wall. So you can have the folks in your session contribute ideas or links to the wall and then save the URL to refer back to. There’s no need to print out anything during the workshop and run and go make copies as they’ll always have access to the information. Here’s a sample… http://wallwisher.com/wall/techforum09

Do you have any tools you are using with your students or in professional development to eliminate unnecessary handouts and to increase productivity? Please share them!

After mentioning the Wikispaces idea on Friday, there was some interest in starting up some Wikispaces!  We will have some sort of a session on Wikis and Blogs, but I don’t know when, so in the meantime, if you would like to start up a Wikispace, follow this link to sign up: http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers

Be sure to select Private under Wiki Permissions and the check the Educational Use box.  This will prevent ads from appearing on your Wikispace.

I (Jeff Bushman) and Anne Rogalski have set up Wikispaces already, if you have any basic questions.  And if you get going with your site, please share the link so others can take a look at what you are doing!

http://mrbushman.wikispaces.com | http://mrsrogalski.wikispaces.com

Det er noen få ledige plasser på Wiki/Blogg-kurset 13. November

Kurssted: Brundalen vgs., Ressurssenteret. (Ikke nødvendig å ta med pc).
Påmelding: snarest på Påmeldingsskjema

Program:
9.00 -11.30 Komme igang med wiki: Introduksjon med eksempler. Egenarbeid med wiki med veiledning.
11.45 -12.30: Komme i gang med blogg: Introduksjon med eksempler
12.30 – 13.00: Lunsj
13.00 -15.00: Egenarbeid med blogg med veiledning.

Spydspissgruppa i STFK

About 18 months ago I started a Family Wiki. It seemed a good way of doing collaborative genealogy, and sharing family stories and information. A blog like this is quite a good way of recording progress, but current posts soon pass into history and are more difficult to find. A Wiki accumulates information as people add to information correct it and discuss it.

But so far only one other person has contributed anything to our family Wiki. Over the last month it has had about 15 visitors a day, with about 25 page views, but hardly anyone, other than me, has contributed anything, or even commented on what is there, or said whether they have found it useful.

The Beningfield, Brathwaite, Green, Greenaway, Growden and Sandercock pages all got 20 or more visits during September, but nothing in the way of comments or contributions.

As a result of this, I’ve stopped trying to add to these Wiki pages — there just doesn’t seem to be much point. I occasionally post a small correction to what is already there, but it doesn’t seem to be worth the effort to add much.

What I hoped might happen is that at least some people related in any of these family lines might contribute information on the people they were related to, and possibly start their own family wikis for other branches of their families not related to ours, so that we could then have links between common relations, and contribute to each other’s stories. But it seems that few are interested in such collaboration. And unfortunately there are too many who just grab what information they can from any source, but aren’t willing to give anything in return. As a result I’ve become a little reluctant to give family history information to others unless they show that they are willing to share what they know as well.

Of course it’s possible that most of the people who look at the Wiki pages are not related — most visitors seem to be from the USA, whereas most of our families are in South Africa, the UK, Australia and Canada.

Gran parte del trabajo de proyecto se comparte con los demás compañeros. Como se establece el los criterios de calificación, los alumnos deben compartir apuntes, conceptos de corte económico, noticias económicas y resúmenes de libros de lectura.

Para ellos se hace indispensable un espacio virtual donde tenga cabida esa actividad. Un espacio privilegiado para poder efectuar esta tarea es una wiki.

Un wiki, o una wiki, es un sitio web cuyas páginas web pueden ser editadas por múltiples voluntarios a través del navegador web. Los usuarios pueden crear, modificar o borrar un mismo texto que comparten. Los textos o «páginas wiki» tienen títulos únicos. Si se escribe el título de una «página wiki» en algún lugar del wiki, esta palabra se convierte en un «enlace web» a la página web.

La aplicación de mayor peso y a la que le debe su mayor fama hasta el momento ha sido la creación de enciclopedias colaborativas, género al que pertenece la Wikipedia. Existen muchas otras aplicaciones más cercanas a la coordinación de informaciones y acciones, o la puesta en común de conocimientos o textos dentro de grupos.

La mayor parte de los wikis actuales conservan un historial de cambios que permite recuperar fácilmente cualquier estado anterior y ver ‘quién’ hizo cada cambio, lo cual facilita enormemente el mantenimiento conjunto y el control de usuarios destructivos. Habitualmente, sin necesidad de una revisión previa, se actualiza el contenido que muestra la página wiki editada.

Para poder manejar correctamente la wiki que crearemos en Wikispaces, debes consultar el siguiente manual:

Ivrige kursdeltakere på wiki og bloggkurs.

Det viste seg å være stor interesse for wiki og blogg kurset 25.september. Vi har derfor bestemt at det blir et nytt kurs i november. Tid og sted med påmelding kommer på Spydspissblogg og STFK-intranett snart.

You know that feeling when you think things aren’t happening, but then all of a sudden you realise that your efforts are starting to pay dividends? Well, that’s what’s happening at my school (Toorak College) now. I feel like we are making inroads. Kids are using Nings and Wikis and it’s becoming the norm. There isn’t the questioning that used to come with the introduction of new ideas. Teachers are starting to take on board what I’ve been rabbiting on about and they are seeing how effective the learning can be using collaborative tools.

Liana Gooch teaches at my school and was part of our PLP group. Here is her guest post. Take it away Liana!

Coming from a country in which bush fires do not feature as a significant hazard as they do in Australia, the events of February 7^th 2009 have left an indelible mark on the memories of myself and my students.  It was extremely heart breaking to view the images of destruction and loss experienced by those people involved in the Victorian Bushfires. As well as the human cost, it is also essential to consider the havoc wrecked upon nature. A lot of creatures were helpless to escape the fury of the flames and many that did manage to survive have suffered immense injury. 

When it came to consider a unit of study related to endangered species with my year 7 Humanities class, I was determined to create a research unit that was not only compelling but also relevant. Students would usually choose to explore overseas endangered species but coverage of the Victorian Bushfires’ impact upon many already endangered species alerted me to taking a more local focus. In the back of my mind I also was concerned about the potential lack of knowledge regarding their own state’s endangered species. My suspicions were confirmed when I surveyed the class about identifying the state’s animal symbol, the highly endangered Leadbeater Possum – only one student was able to identify it. Thus, the inquiry ‘ How can we protect our backyard?’ emerged. 

Another focus of this inquiry project would be to expose students to a range of technological tools that would be easily transferrable across their range of subjects. Working with Jenny Luca and Megan Davies, we decided that a wikispace would be an ideal medium for students to post and convey their research to the rest of the world. While the students knew I would be assessing their page, they knew that this inquiry was going to have to be authentic due to the wikispace being open to the public. Students were taught how to manipulate many of the tools available on the wikispace and a lot was learnt through the process by trial and error. As students were working collaboratively it made sense to use Google Docs which allowed students to simultaneously work and edit a written piece together on different computers. It also eliminated the age old problem of when students are absent and have the written piece with them thus hindering a group’s progress. This tool proved invaluable and it has been exciting to observe students use this tool for other projects since this inquiry.  Jenny also taught the students about a range of websites where students would be able to use copyright free images for their pages. Another skill gained was the ability to write comments using the pins of Google Maps. One student produced her own clip of a journey through the affected Kingslake area and used voice thread to create her own commentary.  Students found the application of technology to be an effective tool which made the learning process a lot more interesting. ‘It is a lot of fun and instead of being boring the work was challenging and interesting so it made it a lot easier to work. It is a great way to become more familiar with internet tools and skills.’ (Hayley) 

 I wanted students to actively engage with concepts we had explored earlier in the unit related to sustainability. Students were initially exposed to Dr Seuss tale of  ‘The Lorax’ which made many of the complex components of sustainability easily attainable. A reflective component of their inquiry which would test their understanding of some of the big ideas would require them to reflect upon how the Lorax would perceive and comment upon the causes and effects of the Bushfires as well as  the ensuing actions to reduce their impact.  Following through the list of aspects to be explored students would be able to explore a range of both primary and secondary resources ranging from newspaper clips, you tube videos, podcasts from experts and contact with applicable organisations. Students constructed questions to inquire about the actions taken by their selected organisation’s actions to assist with affected animals. Many students were extremely excited about receiving information directly from organisations especially when a lot of the information could not be directly found in the range of resources available online or otherwise. 

The inquiry took about three weeks in total during which time students were completed engaged and engrossed in their research. There were several occasions when it was actually difficult to get the students to stop working! It took considerable time to do my initial research and creation of the inquiry assignment. I also had to learn some of the new technological tools before I could launch the project, however the benefits of undertaking a project with which many of the students were so connected were immense. Their understanding of endangered species in their own backyard and the critical role that humans play has been significant. ‘it shows that we have to be aware of sustainable development and reducing our resources for the future. The Victorian Bushfires has decreased the amount of trees, land, homes and animals, and that reduces many resources for the future.’ ‘This project has made me think about animals in a completely different way then I had before.’ Rather than just producing an assignment which would only be viewed by the teacher, themselves and family, Students were courageous as they gallantly rose to the challenge of creating commentary which was up to scrutiny by the public.  It was also extremely encouraging to hear students comment about taking social action as a result of this project. One student has become involved in adopting a koala and to date, our class are considering fund raising to either help adopt an endangered animal or contribute to a wildlife fund. Another student is starting to consider a career path related to the care of injured animals. To me, this is what learning that is inspiring should be all about – making authentic, meaningful and relevant links to the world around us.

Well done Liana and well done Year 7. You’ve created a rich resource for others to use and you’ve learnt some new skills in the process. Make sure you visit their wiki.

Last week I wrote about sending out a tweet on twitter asking if anyone had a connection to Mirka Mora, as my daughter and her friends were doing a project about her and would love to get the opportunity to interview her. After some help from Lauren O’Grady,  Gina Milicia very kindly responded and set the wheels in motion. Mirka was happy to be interviewed, and my daughter and her friends conducted a phone interview that was recorded and posted to YouTube and on the wikispace they had created for the project.  At the end of the interview Mirka remarked to me that she was impressed with their astute questions and would like to invite them to afternoon tea.

Well, that very kind invitation was taken up this afternoon. My daughter and her friends, and a colleague and I, spent a very pleasant hour and a half visiting Mirka’s home sharing cheesecake and lemon tea.

Mirka welcomed us with a loud chorus of classical music and a warm smile. She is such a  generous soul, full of wisdom that she imparted to us over the course of our visit. One of the first things she said was that we should always praise ourselves; in other words, exhibit self belief. The stories she shared demonstrated her ability to take risks and do things that she was not always confident about. This self belief led to great success and opportunities for Mirka. She was friendly with some of the great Australian painters and recounted stories about her great friend Marcel Marceau.

Mirka’s home is full of memorabilia and artwork. In  her studio she had three art works on the go and she said this is how she paints. She likes to move to where she feels best able to extend her creativity.  It was such a privilege  for all of us to be invited to her private space and be able to see what Mirka is all about. And what is she about? Life, and living it to the full, pure and simple.

Mirka and her pet snail! Her beloved cat died two years ago.

Mirka shared a story that epitomised what she is about. Her doctor told her a few years ago that she should have a walking frame when out and about. Mirka would have none of that. Instead, she invested in prams and now has 16 or so that she uses when out shopping. One day she was out and saw a woman with four children, one of whom was very young and struggling to keep up. The mother looked harried. Mirka approached her and gave her the pram she was using. She told us how they shared a moment together; they were united in the shared experience of motherhood.  When telling us this Mirka’s eyes were teary and I have to admit, mine were too. 

This has been a wonderful learning experience for our students (and my daughter!)  I think it safe to say that Mirka found it equally powerful. I think she was genuinely impressed with the students’ questions and with the fact that she is having an impact on our younger generation. It’s an example of Network Literacy; teachers using social media tools to connect our students to the subject of their research. I know that these students will never forget Mirka Mora and they know what led us to her. As we walked away today from from Mirka’s home one of them said,  “That’s it. I’m never dissing Twitter again.”

A great experience for all. Thank you so much Mirka for your graciousness in allowing us into your home and for sharing your life with us. We are all the richer for it.

Just a note I am shifting our file dump back to Wikispaces.

I will upload the guides and such this week.

 Once upon a time a middle-aged librarian, woke up lost in cyberspace. She was adrift in a sea of information and needed a little organization. Organization  being part of compulsive librarianship — she set about looking for the best way to do this. Perhaps what she needed was her own wiki. That way she could share her endeavor with others.

She had tried contributing to a wiki before. It was  confusing. Did the creators intend for users to sdd text, create a page or add to  the discussion thread?  The text editor was kind of like a word processor, but more limited and the results often looked “messy”  She wasn’t sure she actually like wikis.Maybe she just needed a wiki “just right” for her.

  So the  intrepid librarian decided to go on a wiki service hunt.  She wanted her wiki site to have the following features:

1. It would be free.
2. It would be easy to edit.
3. It would look neat and professional.
4. It would be flexible.
5. It would be “educator friendly”

She was inspired by some wikis that other people had created. 

• The File Cabinet created by Kelly Hines, hosted by PBworks
• Twitter for Teachers by  Rodd Lucier, (thecleversheep ) hosted by Wetpaint
• Monarch Library by Keisa Williamshosted by WikiSpaces
• WebTools4u2use created by, Donna Baumbach, (AuntyTech) hosted by Wikispaces

She had three wiki services in her sights.  PbWorks (PBwiki at that time),  Wetpaint, and Wikispaces.

She stopped by Wetpaint first because it seemed to have more “fun features.”  It did not have the look of the old confusing wikis she didn’t like.  It did have very prominent advertising on its free version.  But the discussion threads were really cool and the themes were bright and inviting.  There was advertising saying educators could get free sites with no advertising.  She signed up and created a wiki called The Library Toolbox. But, then she realized that a free educational version was hard to obtain for an elementary educator.  These accounts were only for teachers working with students over 13 who could legally have there own accounts with WetPaint.  The ads were very prominent, as well.  They were full-color.   They flashed and moved.  It would not be a good site to share links with the teachers at her school.  It cost $19.95 per month to have the ads removed.  Once the wiki had been created, it could not be deleted.  Also, though it could be renamed, the URL would reflect the original name.  This was not the most  friendly policy for someone experimenting. 

Next, she visited Wikispaces.  Free personal wikis here, also, contained advertising.  However, these ads were discrete little text ads.  These could be turned off for a mere $5 per month or $50 per year. Also, ad-free wikis for K-12 educational use were free.  Wikis could easily be renamed and deleted.  She signed up for one of these.  There were several themes to choose from. She had a vision for how she would like the page to look, but soon found she had trouble getting lists to appear as “neat” as she wanted.  Sometimes, it was difficult to position inserted objects where she intended them to be.

Finally she checked out PBworks.   She found limited flexibility in the layout of her wiki or “collaborative workspace.”  However, the text editor was slightly more intuitive to her than the one at Wikispaces.  She could insert objects easily here, also.  (She did discover that no wiki allows you to move objects around like a MS Word document.)  There were no ads on a small, personal wiki with 100 or fewer users.  This could be used as a class wiki, also.  A special classroom wiki package with additional benefits was available for $100.  PBWorks pages, always had a clean, neat appearance,  The to-do lists and side-bar options were very appealing, as well.  The librarian chose this site for a personal workspace to house links, create to-do lists and experiment. 

So, now our curious and sometimes befuddled  librarian  had three wiki accounts on different services.  If the PBworks site was to be the home-base she desired, what would she do with the other two accounts?  The Wetpaint site could not be deleted or have its URL changed.   But it was flashy and invited membership and discussion more than the other two sites.  She turned it into a public site to invite other librarians to share experiences and examples in using web 2.0 tools in their libraries.  She kept the original name of all three of her wiki experiments The Library Toolbox. She would love to have you join this site.  The August topic of discussion is wikis.  Please share your wiki stories with others.

The Wikispaces site she renamed the Edison Wishwiki.  She attempted to create a collaborative environment for her school learning community to share requests and suggestions for learning resources needed in her library media center.  She, also, wanted all of her book requests on-line.  She had been trying to banish all little lost sticky notes from her professional life.  Though, our ever hopeful librarian was short on collaborators, during the past school year, the site improved her personal organization immensely!  The addition of a Google form will make it simpler to add requests for those shy about “joining” the wiki this fall. 

The PBworks wiki, The DJProject, became a bit neglected..  It was easier to simply bookmark links in Diigo or add them to her school website than go back to her original plan.  She is still in awe of Kelly Hines and Donna Baumbach in their abilities to organize and share  links with others.  Perhaps she should update her to-do list today.  She finally completed this blog post.  

The librarian  enjoyed her adventure with the three wikis,  learned more than she thought possible. and  developed three very different, useful websites.  Have you gone wiki-hunting yet ?

In addition to my Classroom wiki, I also have had students create their own.  SQL FUNctions is a resource that the students have used themselves and have shared over the internet.  It is also something that can be built upon each year by my students.  I created the wiki and had the students join it.  They were split up into groups and they had to create the site according to the style guide I provided.

I’ve been watching the stats, people do actually use the site on a regular basis, which is something the students can be proud of.

From the AASL These are the Best Web Sites for Teaching and Learning

All teachers/librarians should take a look at these sites and see how they can use them in the classroom.

“The “Top 25″ Web sites foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration. They are free, Web-based sites that are user friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover.

• Organizing and Managing
• Content Collaboration
• Curriculum Sharing
• Media Sharing
• Virtual Environments
• Social Networking and Communication

The AASL just released there best websites for teaching and learning. It is a great resource for all teachers.

Organizing and Managing

Standards for the 21st-Century Learner

• 2.1.2 – Organize knowledge so that it is useful.
• 2.1.4 – Use technology and other information tools to analyze and organize information.
• 3.1.4 – Use technology and other information tools to organize and display knowledge and understanding in ways that others can view, use and assess.

Diigo

Need help in organizing your favorite websites? Diigo is a social bookmarking site that allows users to save websites, as well as tag them, add sticky notes and annotations, and share them with other users in various groups.

Tip: Sticky notes are an effective way to start a virtual conversation among teams of students on the merits of a website.

Google Reader

Overwhelmed with all the information on the Internet? Google Reader is a tool for gathering, reading, and sharing all the relevant blogs and websites you read on the web.  This easy-to-use tool constantly checks sites (blogs, news sites, and webpages) that have been selected by you, scans them for updates and new content, and then organizes them in the Reader for easy access. Reader is a great organization tool to keep current with educational trends, research and news!

Tip: This is a great organizational tool for students to keep current on their research topics.

Simply Box

If you’re a visual learner, then this is the tool for you! Simply Box is a tool that allows users to capture, share, and organize anything found on the web into an unlimited number of “boxes” and then share with friends, groups, students, or the world. However, rather than saving lists of bookmarks, it allows users to capture just a part of a webpage, whether it’s a headline, a paragraph, a photo, or a video. Items can be saved and organized.

Tip: As students collaborate on projects, this tool makes it easy to organize, cite and keep track of the individual resources culled from various websites.

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Content Collaboration

Standards for the 21st-Century Learner

• 1.3.4 – Contribute to the exchange of ideas within a learning community.
• 3.1.2 – Participate and collaborate as members of a social and intellectual network of learners.
• 3.1.4 – Use technology and other information tools to organize and display knowledge and understanding in ways that others can view, use and assess.

Mindmeister

Be creative — think maps! Mindmeister and Bubbl.us are both online mapping tools:  Mindmeister is better for middle and high school students, while Bubbl.us is for younger students. Both websites allow users to think visually, collaborate, and share ideas through concept maps.

Tip: Effective tools for teams of students to collaboratively brainstorm what they know about a subject and what questions they want to research.

Polleverywhere

If you want to get learners’ attention, then ask a provocative question. Poll Everywhere is a voting platform that can be used in classrooms and libraries to gather answers to a particular question. Participants vote by sending a text message via their cell phones or by voting on the web.

Tip: Use this survey tool to involve and connect students to complex issues.

Wikispaces

This is the quintessential collaborative tool! This easy-to-use website allows anyone to write, edit and share content, depending on the permissions granted by the wiki owner.

Tip: Students can use a wiki as a research journal, documenting their progress from beginning questions to finished products, as they receive feedback directly on the wiki from their classroom teacher and librarian.

Zoho

Zoho offers an all-in-one online collaborative package; it provides online tools from mail and presentations to notebooks and wikis, with many tools in between.

Tip: Students can share their work and presentations on the web for fellow students, parents, administrators, and educators to view.

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Curriculum Sharing

Guidelines for School Library Programs: Instructional Partner
“The SLMS collaborates with classroom teachers to develop assignments that are matched to academic standards and include critical thinking skills, technology and information literacy skills, and core social skills and cultural competencies. The SLMS guides instructional design by working with the classroom teacher to establish learning objectives and goals, and by implementing assessment strategies before, during and after assigned units of study.”

Curriki

Seeking new teaching strategies? If you’ve got an old lesson that you want to breathe new life into, Curriki can help. It is a free member website where educators share ideas and hear from others in the profession.

Tip: If you have a lesson that you love to teach with your students, share it with others. Everyone can be successful if we all help each other to be better teachers.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills

What skills will our students need to be successful in the 21st century? Partnership for the 21st Century offers educators information, resources, and tools to understand, identify and integrate the 21st century skills of creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving skills and communication and collaboration skills.

Tip: Here’s a great resource to help educators learn how to integrate 21st Century Skills into the curriculum.

Primary Access

Capture your students’ imagination with movie narratives based on primary sources. Primary Access is an online tool that allows students and teachers to combine text, visual, and sound elements, which are then combined to convey information about their chosen historical event or time frame. A library of Primary Access movies is available through a catalog by historical time period.

Tip: Encourage active learning: have students choose a historical event or time frame to research and synthesize their information through a Primary Access movie.

SOS for Information Literacy

Learn how to effectively incorporate information literacy into your lesson plans. S.O.S. for Information Literacy is a dynamic, collaborative web-based multimedia resource for educators, K to 16. This site links lesson plans and teaching ideas for information literacy through a comprehensive quality control system to ensure that lessons are high caliber.

Tip: Create an account and build your own lessons or activities.

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Media Sharing

Standards for the 21st-Century Learner

• 2.1.4 - Use technology and other information tools to organize and display knowledge and und understanding in ways that others can view, use and assess.
• 3.3.4 - Create products that apply to authentic, real-world context
• 4.1.8 - Use creative and artistic formats to express personal learning

Animoto

Create a video in five minutes – no kidding! Using Animoto, educators and students can create videos that contain photos, graphics, music, text and more! It is only limited by your imagination.

Tip: A great resource for visual learners! Instead of the typical book report, challenge your students to create a dynamic Animoto to capture the essence of their favorite books.

Our Story

Create your story! Our Story permits users to develop and save collaborative timelines that can be personalized with annotations, photos, and videos. Stories (timelines) can be printed in book format, archived on DVD, or even sent as postcards.

Tip: Teach your students to develop content-specific timelines that are linked to the teaching of research and information literacy skills.

Teacher Tube

What could be better? You Tube – just for teachers and students! Teacher Tube offers videos solely for the field of education. Videos are created by teachers and students to be shared with other teachers and students.

Tip: A great way to have students share their work with parents and for teachers to share with other teachers, peers, and administrators, both on-campus and off.

VoiceThread

The end of the boring slide show! VoiceThread allows users to share images, documents, and videos with added narration by the authors and others.

Tip: Bring oral history to life in the classroom, as students narrate a series of images that relate to the skills and ideas they have learned in a particular lesson.

Wordle

Do you like to play with words or create visual poems? A “Wordle” enables you to create a word “cloud,” visually depicting the relationship between words based on their frequency of use. You can tweak your word “clouds” with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

Tip: Teach students to create a Wordle to express their reading interests or their favorite book.

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Virtual Environments

Standards for the 21st-Century Learner

• 2.1.5 - Collaborate with others to exchange ideas, develop new understandings, make decisions, and solve problems.
• 3.1.2 - Participate and collaborate as members of a social and intellectual network of learners
• 4.3.1 - Participate in the social exchange of ideas, both electronically and in person.

RezED

Learn about virtual worlds in a safe, supportive environment with other educators. RezED is the hub for learning about virtual worlds, providing practitioners with access to the highest quality resources and research in the field.

Tip: Check out RezEd’s monthly podcasts, online webinars, virtual chats, and discussion groups.

Second Life

Create an avatar and join other educators in Second Life to explore virtual reality, a world where you, the user, can participate in professional development, meet colleagues to explore and discover and create new understandings about learning in virtual worlds.

Tip: Meet with people from all over the world without having to leave your classroom , library, or home office.

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Social Networking and Communication

Standards for the 21st-Century Learner

• 3.1.2 – Participate and collaborate as members of a social and intellectual network of learners
• 4.1.7 - Use social networks and information tools to gather and share information
• 4.3.1 - Participate in the social exchange of ideas, both electronically and in person.

Classroom 2.0

Do you find it difficult to keep up with the latest Web 2.0. technologies? Join Classroom 2.0 Ning, a social network for educators who are using or want to use Web 2.0 in their libraries and classrooms.

Tip: Look at the Classroom 2.0 weekly webinars, featuring leading Web 2.0 educators  – a great way to learn for both the novice and experienced educator.

Edublogs

Do you want to blog? Edublogs, created especially for educators, is a resource where teachers and librarians can create their own blogs with templates and help from other educators.

Tip: Blogging is a good strategy to help students develop their own voices in writing.

Facebook

Facebook is a popular social networking site that allows users to share with friends and colleagues. The key is sharing information and Facebook allows you to set personal and professional limits on the information you share.

Tip: Use Facebook to engage students and support the curriculum: a team of students are challenged to create a Facebook page for Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Good Reads

A social network for book lovers! Members can keep track of the books they have read, make recommendations to others, vote on book lists that are posted, see what their friends are reading and recommending, and form book groups.

Tip: Teachers can develop a reading group for their students where discussions can develop, suggestions for new material can be found and lovers of particular genres can find each other.

Ning

Create your own social network for your classroom, your school group or your library. Share your ideas, pictures, and plans. Choose the features, a forum, a blog, members’ pages, RSS feeds – whatever you would like to share and collaborate and control the membership.

Tip: Classroom or library nings give students opportunities to learn how to effectively and safely be members of an online social network.

Skype

Can you hear me? Skype is a basic and easy-to-use service that offers free voice, video calls, conference calls, instant messaging and group instant messaging. Download the software; connect to the Internet and you’re good to go.

Tip: Invite an author or a content expert to Skype with your students.

Twitter

What are you doing? Twitter, a website for communication among friends and colleagues, is based on this question. Everyone who is connected to your account can know what you are doing at anytime, just send a “tweet.”  This is a way for everyone to keep track of everyone else.

Tip: Students working in research teams, designate secretaries to keep the instructor and librarian up to date on how the group is doing throughout the project.”

What is a Wiki? The most well-known example is Wikipedia, and not so well-known Wikibooks. You can create an account and edit content on both of these pages. Never fear, there are plenty of administrators that can control editions and modifications…too a point.

Wikispaces is a wonderful way to share the concept of a Wiki with your students, while giving them Web Space for creating their own content. Although blogs can be a great tool for students to share digital content, Wikis seems to provide teachers with enough flexibility in creating student web pages (See account support here>>>http://www.wikispaces.com/help+Teachers )

Create your own Wikispace. Once you are in a school, you can apply for the educators version and create users for all your students, create pages for them and UNLEASH them!

Over the past few weeks my pupils and I have been using wikispace.com to produce wikis on various holiday destinations. Pupils are working in groups of no more than 3 on these collaborative projects.  Each group has a group leader who acts as the admin and sets the theme etc… This is a great way of introducing pupils to a web 2.0 collaboration project, most of the pupils become highly motivated and continue to work at home.  We also spent a lesson on looking at widgets and other embeds. Pupils are now becoming  more confident and are viewing the embed HTML code to see how they can manipulate the size of widgets. The next thing i plan to show them is some basic CSS to so that they can manipulate the themes of the wikis. Pupils really enjoy embedding the lastfm.com radio player widget. This has allowed them to embed music of a particular genre on their pages.

This project has invoked curiosity in other pupils as well as staff. A colleague of mine Robert Withey who is the second in science has started a great KS3 science wiki with his year 7s. This is to be used and developed by the next cohort of year 7s next September 2009.  The pupils at this stage have been organised in groups and allocated topics. They are demonstrating what they have learnt in science by creating wiki pages full of subject content.

All the pupils that have worked on wikispaces are now making use of the e-mailing and social networking facilities to collaborate with other classes in other areas.

I have included some examples (WIP) below.

Holiday in Cambodia

Egyptian Fun

Granville Science

As new technologies start to make it into the classroom, educators have to be careful with protecting the students, and themselves. I needed to go beyond just discussing and sharing with the administration and parents. I used a Protected Wiki this allowed me to both control who was posting and leave it open for oversight.  In a protected wiki, anyone can browse the site, but only members can participate in discussions and make new pages.

How this worked with students:

• Can join the wiki and post
• Can loose the privilege to post if they abuse the wiki.
• Can always see their assignments.

How this worked with parents:

• Can see what their students are doing.
• Can check on assignments and due dates.

How this worked with administration:

• Any issues could be addressed directly

I also used an RSS feed to monitor students’ comments.  I told the students that I watch what they do, and they can loose privileges and points.  I never needed to follow through on this threat.

I learned about Wikispaces in Grad School.  I decided that it’s the direction that I need to take my classroom.  I have been using this Wiki for over a year and have been very successful.  I like the fast updates (I can update assignments while I’m talking to the students.)  I also like the fact that it’s open and transparent.  Anyone (parents or administrators) can have access to everything on the site.  On my Teacher Resources page I have links and a setup guide that I created for a PD at my school.

Excellent Video About What a Wiki Is

Well… I’ve not done a very good job of blogging this session, unfortunately.  I’ve been too busy playing with the software and ideas, and thinking about what the tools are, and how to use them.

In essence, a wiki is a series of linked files and pages, created by users and linked to each other by users.  They’re creative, collaborative, and elegant.  I don’t feel like I learned much from this session, but I’m already an experienced Wiki user.

What’s a wiki anyway? Watch this introductory video to find out, and read the overview provided by NWP, Digital Toolbox: Wikis.

Why use a wiki?

This is the question. The answer depends entirely on your needs. Wikis can be public or private collaborative spaces between administrators, teachers, parents, students, or some combination thereof. They can also serve as websites with only certain areas open for collaborative editing. Our own wiki fits into this last category, where members are allowed to edit the Summer Institute pages, but not other restricted areas of the site.

One Idea for Classroom Use

Despite being a great place for authentic, real-world research, Project Citizen could also serve as a great way to venture into collaborative research projects through the use of wikis. My good friend, Terra Mahre, has completed this project with her seventh-graders for several years with outstanding results. Group wikis, linked to a teacher moderated classroom wiki, could work to manage this kind of collaborative research project.

Wiki platforms to consider for education

• Wetpaint: Easy to navigate, organize and manage, Wetpaint offers ad-free wikispace to qualifying educators. With the option to keep your wiki private, this is a good platform for classrooms with students 13 and up (Wetpaint restricts users under 13 because of COPPA). The editing history on Wetpaint sites is a little less searchable than other platforms, but for more advanced users, this platform offers more baubles, whistles, and knobs, as well as organizational drop down menus that can prevent clutter on the navigation toolbar.
• PBworks: Previously called PBwiki (as in, as easy as peanut butter and jelly) PBworks is the new and revised version of their free, teacher moderated wikispace. I prefer this platform for first time users, because of it’s clearly recorded history and simple design.
• Wikispaces: Like almost all wiki platforms, this one provides free classroom spaces, and a simple, easy-to navigate workspace. Personally, this is my least favorite of the three that I’ve listed here. I find that there are too many editing tools available, when a few simple ones would do. I know there are plenty of educators that would disagree, so explore each and decide for yourself.

A few places to find examples of classroom wikis

• EduWikis: A great overview of educational wikis, along with classroom examples.
• Teach2.0-What about Wikis: An evolving list of resources, including classroom examples (scroll to the bottom) and a SWOT analysis.
• Wetpaint Wikis in the Classroom: Browse the list of classroom wikis to get ideas for your own.

A Sample of Ancillary Programs:

What follows is a sampling of programs I’ve found useful in both my personal and professional life. While the county in which I currently work is still, shall we say, in the process of reviewing several of these resources for classroom use, many schools are already using them with their students and leading the way for the rest of us. You can either browse the recommended tools below, or search the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009.

VoiceThread

Used along or in combination with a blog or wiki, VoiceThread allows users to post images, video, and comments (text or voice) to what are essentially interactive slideshow presentations. Although VoiceThread is relatively new, educators around the world (including our own Jennifer Dail) have snapped up some space for their own students. In addition to Jen’s expertise, there are some good online resources to consider when considering VoiceThread for your classroom. If you have sound on your computer, you can watch the VoiceThread introduction.  There are lots of great tutorials on the site that will lead you through the basic in’s and out’s of the software. Voicethread4Education is a good place to start if looking for classroom examples.

SlideShare

Within my own county, SlideShare is blocked (at least as of Jan. 2009), but for the rest of you (and for those who don’t mind doing a little online work from home) SlideShare is the best new way to share slideshow presentations. You can embed slideshows right into your wiki, webpage, or blog without overwhelming your puny email inbox. And, with the option of adding narration and creating a SlideCast, your presentations can become multi-modal.

Gabcast

Record your voice from anywhere using a phone. Simple to set up, easy to manage, I’ve used this with my own classes to allows students to record narration for final drafts, piece together audio for digital projects, and record my own spur of the moment thoughts driving home. For classroom use, consider setting up separate channels, trying it out yourself, and then printing and passing out directions for a test run. Eventually, you may find that students can manage their own channels, or sign up themselves. You can also set up automatic posting to your blog, which could feed into your wiki for audio updates from the teacher. This biggest downside to this service is the inability to moderate comments as they come in. I haven’t found this to be a problem for my own classes, since I manage the channels myself, but be cautious in asking students (especially younger, less mature students) on how to manage their own channels if they sign up themselves.

Flickr

Flickr is an online photo sharing community that often works well in combination with wikis or blogs. On most platforms, you can embed flickr feeds, either from individuals or collaborative photo sharing groups. Many images are also geotagged, which could be a good way for inquiry driven research projects. I often use this site to search for images licensed by the Creative Commons to use in presentations and digital projects.

Wordle.net

Aside from just being pretty cool, Wordle can be used to preview a text, guide students in revision, and create cover art for final drafts. Simply copy and paste any brief passage (or heck, paste the whole student paper into it if you want) and see what emerges. Words that appear more often in the passage will be larger, while less frequent words are smaller. This can help students to see emerging themes in their work, identify areas for word variation, or provide a springboard to discussion where students predict what the text will be about.

Glogster.edu

Build interactive, digital multi-media posters that you can embed and share through your website, blog, or wiki. This is a great way to have students create interactive book reports, collect and share research, and present creative writing in a new way. While my own county has blocked this resource, many classrooms are making good use of this free, online tool. For more information, browse Glogster.edu or do an internet search for Glogster + education.

More options: Teach Web 2.0

The list of options continues to expand, almost daily. When you get to a place where you’re reader to explore some of the hundreds of other options being used in classrooms out there, check out TechWeb2.0. Better yet, join their wiki and add your own expertise to the  collaborative space!

ITEC422 Project Management in IS course has 27 students from different countries. This semester we have done a class project to create a wiki for our department. A wiki for hosting the news of Eastern Mediterranean University SCT IT Department. Although in the beginning they were not very enthusiastic, one of the reasons was this was the first time to use a wiki. For project planning phase we have used a wiki on wikispaces, later the news wiki  NEWSINIT was created on wetpaint.  The students have used wikimatrix to decide which wiki to use.

#17. Wikis  (Such as wikispaces)

Create a wiki for collaborative working. Provide an interactive site for your students, which they can then become active contributors to.

Wikis are the easiest way for students learning how to build information collaboratively, and the work well in class environments.

Wikis are perfect both for a teacher personally and for his or her class. The ability to share information and grow information with a wiki is truly wonderful. And since a wiki can be sorted by page topic — rather than by date (as with a blog) — it makes it a very powerful tool to use. (Note: Wikispaces is giving away free wikihosting for teachers. )

Ønsker du å komme i gang med blogg eller wiki i klassene til høsten? Spydspissgruppa i STFK har arrangert to temadager med fokus på pedagogisk bruk av Web 2.0 dette skoleåret. Mange lærere har uttrykt ønske om å videreføre arbeidet i en workshop. Vi arrangerer derfor et hands-on kurs i blogg og/eller wiki fredag 25. september til høsten. Det blir en sesjon for blogg og en for wiki, og man kan melde seg på en eller begge. Sett av dagen, begrenset antall plasser! Vi sender ut ny melding ved skolestart med påmeldingsinfo. Kurssted Brundalen vgs.

Spydspissgruppa i STFK

Ønsker du å komme i gang med blogg eller wiki i klassene til høsten? Spydspissgruppa i STFK har arrangert to temadager med fokus på pedagogisk bruk av Web 2.0 dette skoleåret. Mange lærere har uttrykt ønske om å videreføre arbeidet i en workshop. Vi arrangerer derfor et hands-on kurs i blogg og/eller wiki fredag 25. september til høsten. Det blir en sesjon for blogg og en for wiki, og man kan melde seg på en eller begge. Sett av dagen, begrenset antall plasser! Vi sender ut ny melding ved skolestart med påmeldingsinfo. Kurssted Brundalen vgs.

Spydspissgruppa i STFK

I love Ning. I really do.

I’m just not all that happy with them right now.

Those of you who follow this blog will know that I started a Ning for our Yr 9 English classes in February this year. It’s been fantastic. A true learning community has formed and it’s become embedded into the fabric of our Yr 9 curriculum. I’m loving the engagement that is possible and the way I can connect with students who aren’t in my actual class. Just tonight I was showing it to parents at our Parent Teacher night. All were impressed and could see the benefits to student learning that this environment promoted. I asked Ning to remove the ads before the students had even joined and they were happy to oblige.

I also help to run Working together 2 make a difference, a Ning site that encourages educators to come together to share their experiences with service learning projects. Once again, I asked Ning to remove the ads and once again, they were happy to oblige.

Last week I had a moment to savour. Yr 9 students who actively engage in our English Ning came to see me to see if I could help them set up a Ning for their Sleepout 4 Schools initiative. They’d figured out that Ning was the best platform for them to engage the wider community in what they are doing.  Sleepout 4 Schools is a school project involving our Yr 9 students; they are holding a fundraiser for our school community on May 22nd in an attempt to raise some money for Daraja Academy and the Bal Ashram in India. The students are working very hard to plan an evening where we will sleepover at school, have fun, skype with Mark Lukach hopefully and raise some money that will help to make a difference.

We set the Ning up. They are working as administrators of the Ning as well and are excited about the possibilities. They are trying to engage other surrounding schools in this service learning and are using the Ning as a tool for connecting. I asked Ning to take the ads off.

They didn’t oblige.   

And so began the email process of me asking (begging really) and them denying.  Our most recent email correspondance saw me ask this;

 Dear Ning team,

Sorry to continue to dispute this, but it is a direct part of our program and is a vital ingredient in the teaching of our students. We are endeavouring to have our students create positive digital footprints for themselves in safe and ethical ways. Having ads that display free video chats for girls is not what I feel is a good advertisement encouraging safe and ethical use. If you look at the domain names of the members they are all students from our school. We are trying to encourage global involvement with other schools to have them participate as well.

Can I please ask you to reconsider once again.

Reply from Ning was this;  

 

 

Dear Jenny,

 

 

Thanks for the follow-up. Once again, while we definitely respect what you’re doing, this simply isn’t covered by what our program is offering. You’re still welcome to purchase the Go Ad-Free premium service, and you can find more details here: 

http://help.ning.com/cgi-bin/ning.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3547&p_created=1233612091 

Best, 

 

The Ning Team 

 

 Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m finding it hard to understand how Sleepout for Schools differs from the intentions of the Yr 9 English Ning and Working together 2 make a difference. It’s a school project, set up by and for students. It’s about EDUCATION.    

Wikispaces and other Wiki creation companies are friendly to K – 12 education. You don’t have to request that ads be removed; they trust that if you tick that box saying it’s for K – 12 use it will be and a Wiki is provided ad free.   

Ning is offering an amazing platform that can be utilised so well in education. Please, those of you making decisions at Ning, think about offering a service for education that will encourage users to explore its potential. We need an ad free service; one that won’t expose students to inappropriate ads that make it hard for us to justify the use of what is an excellent resource in school settings.