ED585_FA09

= = If you are adding comments to this page, you must have joined wikispaces successfully! **Please note that for this discussion activity, you can either post in Unit 7 Wiki in CE6 or post it here, or you can try out both options.** You are welcome to explore the discussions posted by a group from Spring 09 by clicking on ED585_SP09 on the left. Explore the following sites, if you are new to wikis or would like to know more about using wikis in your teaching: Educational Wikis Wikispaces Help for K-12 Teachers[|TeachersFirst: Wiki Walk-Through] [|MediaWiki] [|PBWiki] [|The Scribe Post Hall of Fame] [|Seed Wiki] [|Qwika Search Engine] Share your experiences, thoughts, and resources related to wikis by adding comments on this page (Click on "Edit This Page" on the top and Editor tool bar to format your text). **Please post your comments below mine and add your first name at the end of your message.** I can view Recent Changes (on the left navigation bar) and see who made changes to this page. Let me know by email or call if you have any questions. Thank you.--jm

Although I have no experience using wiki's, my son's English teacher post questions for them to respond to regarding a novel they are studying. It has taught his classmates how to respectfully disagree and respond to other student's opinions about a topic. It also allows students who are unlikely to speak out during class to respond in a less threatening environment. Kudos to those of you who have time to respond during evening hours to your students. I think that is one of the main obstacles to this type of format. I am interested in how to time manage such an event. I leave work and don't stop until at least 8:45 PM with daily living/family requirements. Any suggestions? -- Nicole Borland Nicole, I too have to keep reminding students about their posts on comments. They love to do this. I use a wikki at our school and the tech/lib person is great. I go their during a prep and say what I would like to do wikki wise(project). He schedules me in the media center, I email him my project and comment questions in word, and he uploads it to the wiki. He is a good friend of mine but he does this for all teachers. I then check their material from home. I understand about time, I have a 4th grader, and he has tons of homework, as well as I. If I had to monitor the site myself I could not do it. Raymond "Scott" Austin

I changed the font styles of the instruction and moved some of your entries a little to make it clear to the new visitors. Please know that you are welcome to change the text color of your entry as well. Also, Nicole, that is an interesting observation of using wikis. I agree to what you posted that when wikis are great to extend the classrooms outside of the school walls to allow those who are unlikely to speak out during class to respond, it also adds to the teachers' workload. Anyone has any experience with this? --jm

I currently use PBWiki in my class the tech and I set it up and now the entire school uses the site which we are affraid it will crash. It has to generate so many usernames we are affraid it will crash. When we strated to use this last year it was just my class but the ohter teachers love this. We are shopping around for a much bigger site to hadle all of it. If I recall the site was created by 3 guys in their garage. They are very helpful when you call about a problem. -- Raymond "Scott" Austin P.S. My students love to comment back and forth to each other. I normaally use the comments for have students post a paragraph example after watching the movie the day Lincoln was shot they had to pick wether they thought Booth was a Murderer or Patriot for the South. After posting their paragraph then they had to comment on another students from another period. -- Scott Austin My experience with using wikis is rather limited--zero! After exploring the Wikispaces Help for K-12 Educators, I discovered that they offer a Plus space for educators. I imagine having this account gives you different abilities than the general account. It also says that the Plus plan allows you to create up to 100 accounts at one time for your students. I imagine a wiki can keep students engaged in the content outside of the classroom. For fourth graders, I can see myself using this as a free write at first getting the students used to posting on a wiki and responding to others comments. Eventually, I could see myself using it as a place to discuss assigned readings from our reading anthology. As far as I am concerned, a wiki seems like another way to integrate technology, yet continue to keep the students engaged in the content. -- Sheila

Sheli, My students (8th and 10,11th graders) love to comment back and forth to each other, because it is just like their world of texting. They almost spend to much time doing it and I keep reminding them so they don't get into trouble is to keep it appropriate. I know my son would love to do it in school and he is in the 4th grade. Scott Austin Scott, Thanks for giving me the perspective of a 4th grader. I am jealous that your district has such a cooperative tech person who is willing to post your information on a wiki. I will check out PBwiki for hosting wikis and will try to begin using a wiki for the next novel that I read with my fourth graders. Thanks for your helpful information! --Sheila

In a class I had taken this summer we used a program similar to this. It was great for cooperative learning groups. It would be very helpful in schools. I think it would take a lot of work to get my first graders to understand and use it, but in the upper grades it would be helpful. It would make students responsible for their learning. It is time consuming to listen to a class of students repond to the same questions. Using wikis, you could get a whole class response to a question. Maybe even create deeper thinking if a students ask each other questions like people are doing here. It would be more time consuming than regular instructions. So it is nice to see that the districts that are using it are providing additional help. Misty

Scott, It is great to have all of the help that your school provides. After being at a conference this week and watching all of the teachers and presenters connected to their smart phones and the computers throughout the lobby, it makes a lot of sense that wiki responses are a must use tool for teaching this generation. What safegaurds do you think schools should have in place to monitor that site and "keep it clean and appropriate" for both the students and the teachers. There must a lot of liablity. ~Nicole