Weeks 7 & 8 (Thing 16, 17, & 18)

If anyone is reading this wiki they should have noted that I took a motivated detour in the last two entries. If interested....I finalized my search for a screencast product and decided on ScreenFlow....a not free program that had too many features I couldn't pass up. Really cool.

When exploring Wikis....and surveying the topics of "Things" to come, I bumped into Google Sites. (In case you don't know this...Google Sites is a website that can be opened up for collaboration and therefore has wiki characteristics including tracking changes.) At first Google Sites sounded like an old friend of mine .....Google Page Creator. But after a cursory examination got me to thinking about how I could revamp last years 7th grade orientation program. Oh No....I was off and running on another sidetrack because of its capabilities. (I definitely take back ALL of my "Googler" comments this time. Why can't their database be as cool as their tools?) The integration between the Google Documents, Blogger, and YouTube within Google Sites makes it very easy to produce online information that not only supports the curriculum, but provides lots of opportunity for developing differentiated instructional activities. I also believe my new Google Site creation may encourage life long learning skills as well. (At least I am designing it that way.) Once I have completed Day One of my orientation program I will add a link to this new WikiSite of mine.

As usual I thoroughly enjoyed perusing the various wiki links and seeing how each librarian took advantage of the features of this tool to promote their own library programs or collaborate with their colleagues. I especially liked the wiki used in the public library as a communication tool for the library staff with forms, procedures, tips, reminders and policy statements. This could be a really good thing for the librarians in our district who meet so few times as a group. They have such great ideas, and have so little time to collaborate. Having a place for easily adding database tips, fax numbers, and promoting new resources, would be a very positive thing for our department.

I hate to leave this entry without a link to something so I will end with this note......I was not unfamiliar to the world of wikis....before Week 7. I had used a wiki within my district for curriculum sharing. I had also used a wiki the local Access PA Consortium had developed on an Internet curriculum. I could see the opportunity for collaboration in these tools but I knew that the true worth of a wiki is in it use. I don't hear much about these wikis any more and I am not adding to them so I wonder about the effectiveness of the tool. I had even set up a free wiki account in one of the mentioned wiki tools and frankly didn't know what to do with it...so it just sits there.
Last year I was working with a health teacher who wanted to do something different in her smoking unit. She was talking about posters and how her 8th grade middle school students were submitting work products that were a mess. I had always wanted to use Google Pages with students but the email requirement got in the way.....so I spent a night surfing the web looking for free websites without ads and email requirements. After hours of exploration I ended up setting up a teacher wiki in Wikispaces for this health class because they were willing and able to send me a bank of usernames and passwords. I created a template for each page so the pages wouldn't be a mess and tried to keep the tech side low because of limited time. The process was more interesting than the pages. Seems to me that technology isn't quite as motivational as it once was. The generation I am teaching seems to be taking it for granted.....not like myself who continues to be fascinated with all the new possibilities. For several students this was just one more assignment and the same traits of pencil and paper activities were evident. I would have liked to have given each of the students their own space and enough time to be really creative but frankly this is just not practical. Here is a link to this "Dangers of Smoking" wiki. I looked for a reaction ....like..."Wow, I am published on the web." but I never got that. I wonder if this didn't happen because we didn't allow students to provide names for safety reasons. I didn't see anything like this. One of things I learned from this project was that you have to be careful when working at the same times in a classroom. The editing of one group member may wipe out that of another. The students should select times to edit that do not overlap. One of the very good things about group work on a wiki is that the tracking feature also keeps track of student effort. You can easily ascertain by username... time on task and work product. Individual effort in group work can easily be assessed when it is done in a wiki.