A couple of people have asked so for those of you who are still
needing to respond to last week's topic, think about bringing forward
one thing that you took away from the chapter reading. Next, you can talk
about your experience creating your own Wiki. What did you like or
dislike about wikis? What more you would like to learn moving
forward?
Finally, what do all of these links have in common?
https://sites.google.com/site/hybridcoursedesign/
https://sites.google.com/site/tech4teachlearn/
https://sites.google.com/a/tech4tl.net/leading-change/
https://sites.google.com/site/anitazboudreau/
https://sites.google.com/site/coeflex2015/
Something that I took from the chapter about Wikis was the multitude of options for use in the classroom. One idea in particular was a teacher putting text to the curriculum and allowing students to respond, collaborate, add their thoughts and opinions, as well as adding different media like links, videos, and other things. Having avenues like this for students to respond to what they are learning is a really effective way to enhance learning, and also to add more meaning to it; being able to interact not only with the information they are learning, but see perspectives from other students, really broadens learning.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed making a Wiki during class, and exploring all of the options they had. I think that I would definitely pick creating a wiki over a blog, they seem to be easier to navigate while creating. I seemed to get frustrated when making a blog, and the wiki seemed easier to create and mess with. Within a classroom setting, Wikis have more potential than blogs, because you can edit, add, and change things, whereas a blog, you can’t really have that same power.
I am not sure if there is more that I would like to learn, but I would definitely like to spend a little more time exploring and creating to find other ways to use Wikis in the classroom. I think that all of the links are the same because they are all forms of Wikis. They all have multiple pages, links to other sources, search options, and embedded material.
After reading the chapter I was really excited to learn about how to create a wiki because I could see the vast potential and many uses that using a wiki in a classroom setting could have. I liked the idea of creating an online place for my students to go and share and interact with others. I strongly believe in project based learning, even in a Special Ed setting and wikis could be a great way to augment that learning for our students. However, after spending the evening in class, trying to create a wiki for myself, I grew really frustrated. I felt that it was much easier to create a blog and maintain it as a learning environment for my class. I am not dead set against revisiting the use of wiki's in my classroom as I think another try at creating one would be a good idea for me and potentially less frustrating. All the links listed are examples of wikis used for and in our program.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about wikis this week. The chapter talks about ways to use wikis in the classroom and I find it intriguing to think about students making a shared resource, like a study guide. I volunteer at Hilhi both with the robotics team I coach, and now a computer game design team for the Oregon Game Project Competition (OGPC). The OGPC team has been getting organized and it is really an exercise in collaborative work. In fact, its funny because its sometimes an echo of my technology class except that at Hilhi I am a guide but the kids choose their tools and do the work. They are using several tools to to their software development, track open issues, work on planning documents and presentations, and more. They use GitHub for tracking issues and sharing code. They use Drive for sharing documents. They use email of course, but also text messaging for more immediate communication. They use skype for group conferencing when they work together. Most recently, they created a blog, http://ogpccombustiblelemons.tumblr.com/. Its just the beginning, they are learning how to use it.
ReplyDeleteHow do all of these tools fit together? The blog could be the central point. Or is a wiki more appropriate since their primary goal is collaboration towards a final product which includes the output of many other tools? I’m still not sure. The blog will work and I’m not going to steer them away from it but the timeline provided is not really important to their journey. The collaboration and the growing collection of documents wants a platform of organization where they can all equally contribute. It sounds more like a job for a wiki to me.
I thoroughly enjoyed creating the WIKI, I believe it it the most flexible and all-encompassing use of technology we have reviewed thus far. For me, the wiki has supplanted the blog as my preferred home-base for a VLE. A second line of thought I had following last week’s lesson is that it will be a priority for my employment search that the School/District already embrace or be open to classroom innovation. There have been constant dovetails for me, where I can envision using the tools we’re learning in EDU607 to further the goals I am learning from EDU604.
ReplyDeleteIn a Social Studies classroom in particular I can see using a WIKI both as a source for providing content to students (Primary documents, Scholarly articles, etc…) as well as being a repository for student-created content. I can envision assigning a “jig-saw” style assignment to cover the Revolutionary War. Student groups would investigate their own topics, but then publish their findings collectively with others to create their own Wiki-History. Done this way, students would gain simple content, but much more importantly they would play the part of Historian, deciding what has merit or not, which colleagues to engage with or not, and might leave with an understanding of History as a Social construct. (“You mean, what we just did IS History?”) All the while developing group-work skills, tech skills, reading/writing/reasoning skills, etc... I am pumped to get started!
My hypothesis is that the commonality of the given links is that they are all authored by our very our Dr. AZB. The possible exception is the “Leading Change” site, I could not locate authorship info, but I think it is her style.
I'm glad that we had an opportunity to create a wiki in class. For kindergarten, I see myself using it as a tool more like an informational web site to communicate with parents as a resource for them. I would post a little bit about me, a class calendar, class supply list, educational resources for parents. The blogs that we created I can see myself using a class journal where I can share info about what has been happening in the classroom as well as posting videos.
ReplyDeleteCreating a wiki was surprisingly simple. I was able to find a beginning template that was structured in a way that made sense to me and I was able to figure out how to change and edit it to create more links. I want to be able to figure out a way to add my own graphics though. But this was a good beginning in understanding how I could use this in my own classroom.
All of the posted links are different kinds of wikis.
I'm glad that we had an opportunity to create a wiki in class. For kindergarten, I see myself using it as a tool more like an informational web site to communicate with parents as a resource for them. I would post a little bit about me, a class calendar, class supply list, educational resources for parents. The blogs that we created I can see myself using a class journal where I can share info about what has been happening in the classroom as well as posting videos.
ReplyDeleteCreating a wiki was surprisingly simple. I was able to find a beginning template that was structured in a way that made sense to me and I was able to figure out how to change and edit it to create more links. I want to be able to figure out a way to add my own graphics though. But this was a good beginning in understanding how I could use this in my own classroom.
All of the posted links are different kinds of wikis.