I have really enjoyed looking at the wiki sites this week and keep seeing some great ideas for wiki uses. I was actually so inspired that i decided i would offer a WIKI class to my Teach 21 teachers next semester if i can find enough materials. One of the wiki’s i really enjoyed was Teacher First Wiki Walk Through. This site really helped me understand all of the components of a Wiki. Jennifer Davis’ blog about Wikis helped me think through the reality of how teachers might use a wiki in their classroom. Jennifer Dorman’s wiki Grazing For Digital Natives is chock full of great tools. Maybe a little overwhelming for those of us who are just starting to learn about wikis. School’s in the Past was more my speed. It was very simple, didn’t have a lot of add ons but had enough topics to engage students, parents and grandparents. Great start for a collaboration site. The Salute to Seuss reminded me of a project that one of my Teach 21 teachers did last year so it gave me another idea for a Teach 21 capstone. I like the way the left side bar is organized. It was very easy to navigate through this site. As of right now, i don’t have enough wiki experience to do any of them better but hopefully as i look at these examples i will
I am really trying to be open minded about the RSS feeds this time because i kinda of resisted adding them when i took Web 2.0 with Sandi. However, even now that i have added the required feeds i feel completely overwhelmed by the amount of information that is coming through these feeds. There is no way in all of creation to process or even try to keep up with all of this material. I am going to look at this as the training ground for my retirement days….when i will have nothing but time to read.
One article that did catch my attention though was the blog about Shopping for a Wiki Tool. I have been fascinated with WIKIS from the first time i saw one and i am so anxious to figure out how teachers can really use them for collaboration projects in the classroom. This blog helped me to understand more about the uses of wikis and i am looking forward to our week to learn more about wikis.
I have heard about blogging for several years now and have tried to create a blog once in another class, but really wasn’t sure how and why a teacher would use a blog. After looking at 5 specific blogs and actually reading most of all them, i am starting to get the picture. My favorite of the 5 blogs was Ben Wilkoff’s blog about The Ripe Environment. This one hit me exactly the way i feel about all of this new technology. Ok. We have it, but what do we do with it and how do we use it. I was so excited last year when i created a WIKI in another class i was taking and sent it to my family to participate in a family forum. I may have had 2 entries, out of the 8 siblings that i invited to participate. The same think happened with a blog that i set up. Maybe i am just targeting the wrong people or haven’t really figured out how to engage my audience. Hopefully as i work through the class, the end results may become clearer. It appears that people are reading other people’s blogs and commenting on them. It is addicting as many of you are finding out and you end up following the rabbit down many holes as you move from one topic to another. Who has the time?
The other blog that i really liked was called Teaching Brevity. Maybe if we can learn to use a few, concise, emphatic words, then it won’t take us so long to read all of these blogs. For those of you who LOVE to write, blogging would seem like an extension of yourself. Some people have a real gift for words. I can speak them plenty, but have a hard time making my words always so what i want them to say. But i am willing to try. Who knows, i may love it!
Reflection on the article “A Day in the Life”. This is a lot of technology in use during the day and it is a little mind boggling to me. The one think that really hit me as i was reading the article on line and hearing about blogging and wikis – is do you loose the slow readers? Do you loose the poor writers? I am frustrated already because i am used to sitting in my bed, holding my book and reading. I am finding this very tedious to read the computer screen for a long period of time. It dawned on me that i may have to install WORD Q on my laptop so it can read the passage aloud to me. Does this mean i am an auditory learner? Podcasts will certainly help those students who may had difficulty reading so much information. I am afraid the divide will become deeper – those who love to read and write and those who don’t!
Now that i am getting into the class, i am really enjoying this. I hope i will have time to stay on top of things and read everyone else’s post. That is the hardest thing – to find time!
My thought is how are we going to get teachers to move from the big lecture type classroom to the more digital type of classroom. In the video where students held up signs about what they were doing, i understand that the classroom now is still as boring as it used to be. We didn’t know any better but now we do. So how do we make this change. I am also puzzled because so much of what i see the digital natives doing with technology is short bits of information. They text in code and respond on facebook in short bits of language. What makes us think they want to write long paragraphs like this in a blog? Again, this will be more difficult for those students who have a hard time writing. Maybe as we move toward the podcasting or voice recording it will make me see all of the possibilities.
I guess as a mom of an asperger student who has a hard time writing, i am coming from his view point more than from the viewpoint of a regular ed kid. Yet my son does love being connected to his computer. Because he has such poor social skills, he feels like he can be part of a group and has lots of friends. SO i am beginning to see both sides now.
Until I started this class I really thought I was a lifelong learner and I probably am compared to many teachers, but I am feeling like I am WAY behind in this technology age. I need to post the 7 1/2 habits on my wall so i can remember which ones i need to work on most.
- Which habit(s) may be most challenging for you to employ as part of your ETC K12 Learning 2.0 experience? Habits 1,2 and 3 will probably be most challenging for me. I usually jump in without thinking about the end result at all. I also like for someone else to lead me instead of making myself responsible for my own learning. Problems as a challenge – only after a lot of belly aching and complaining!
- Which habit(s) will be easiest, or are most resonant for you as a lifelong learner? THe ones that are easier will be Habits 4 and 6. Working as an ITS for several years, i feel comfortable with new technology one i learn it and i love sharing with teachers and empowering to use the new technology in the classroom.
- Which habit do you think will be most important for you as you work through this course, and why? I think Habit 5 might be most important for me in this class. I need to create my own learning toolbox and figure out what works best for me and how to translate that into a toolbox for other teachers.
