I am incredibly impressed with Sheryl's course syllabus and wish that the incredible speakers she has scheduled could present to many colleges at once. She has an incredible line up and I'm going to be listening to her other speakers. I spent today listening to Anne Davis talk about blogging. Wow! I highly suggest that those of you interested in using blogging in the classroom listen to how Anne has been doing it for years with fifth graders. (The recording is in Elluminate.) Anne teaches teachers at Georgia State University and also finds time to spend 2 hours each week in an elementary classroom. She is incredible!
My Presentation about Wikis Tomorrow To prepare for my presentation., I uploaded my wikis across the curriculum presentation from the K12online conference to Google Video so that I can embed it in wikis and my blog. If you are interested in wikis, this is still my definitive video on using wikis and what I'm doing. It is still valid post-flat classroom project and can give you how I'm using them. (There are many other teachers who are using wikis in other fascinating ways as well.) That is the video at the beginning of this blog post!
I've also shared my slides for tomorrow with her class. We are presenting over Elluminate and I hope that it will be recorded. If so, I'll share it with you. These slides are on slideshare.
I dug up some fascinating resources at the beginning of the presentation. that you might want to read.
These students of Sheryl's are going to be ready to connect and relate to students in incredible, meaningful ways, that is if administrators and IT folks will get out of their way.
Meanwhile, innovators keep getting doors slammed in their faces!
As I've been writing, I got some disheartening news from one of my favorite pairs of wiki educators. I'm not going to name this person right now, however, this incredible math wiki project for middle schoolers has come to a screeching halt because all wikis are now blocked.
When asked if they could just unblock this one wiki, the answer was "it is either all or nothing."
Firstly, I manage a firewall and there is something in there called "allowed URL's" -- I've seen three or four major firewall interfaces and have never seen one without it. This lets a person allow a specific URL even if the primary URL is blocked. (For example, http://westwood.wikispaces.com could be allowed when all other wikispaces were blocked.) I think this teacher is getting the runaround!
Secondly, I see more and more educators continuing to get excited about new technologies only to have the virtual rug pulled out from under them on global collaborative projects when some person in IT, without direct curricular authority, deciding to "pull the plug."
This is kind of like letting the barnkeeper decide when the horse needs to race based upon when they want to clean out the stable. The horse races when there's a race. The teacher needs to teach when there is a need.
Something is upside down about letting curriculum be driven in this way! There must be communication! What a travesty!
But this is not a single instance. It is happening over and over. Time and again! Wikis continue to work Wikis continue to be a great tool in my classroom! They pull together the multiple digital artifacts created by my students in an incredibly easy to use manner!
I have spent some time working on my first wiki today. I wanted to have a look at your flatclassroom project again and get inspired and find answers to my new questions. Here I am back to your blog to find this great presentation!
No more questions. Slide 50 answered me. Got it! Thanks.
I will be using my Corpus wiki with an English as a foreign language class at a language school (students aged 18+). The course starts soon and I will be blogging about this wikifying process in my ELT Notes blog, in case someone wants to have a look.
This is the first for me. Any comments will be welcome with a broad smile.
Wishing you all best with your presentation tomorrow,
I despair of ever being able to do anything with wikis or blogs. Now I am forced to create webpages where students can publish their work as a means for display. Alas.... social networking is not coming to a school near me.
That's my alma mater! Great to know that they are moving ahead with tech in schools instead of the other way around. I hope that they are also instilling in their future educators an openness to all technologies and more importantly an understanding that it is still about good teaching. The technology is just a tool for fostering communication, thinking, and understanding. Go Tribe!
Thanks for pointing me to these materials, especially apbc. We have been using wikis with our students for about a month, and have noticed several pedagogical changes in our classrooms--all for the better.
We are laughing at the urgency the students are showing when we "unleash" them onto the wiki. Before we can nail down the exact assignments, we have students visiting every page and adding content just because they can. It's great stuff. The teachers I work with don't know what to do when their students begin leading discussions on the novels they are reading. When we conference, there is a sense of giddiness that they show when they talk about student engagement.
Thanks (again) Vicki - it's fantastic when teachers in other countries (like me) can see the awesome work that you are doing/sharing and be able to watch/hear/learn just like those who are taking part in the virtual presentation. Your video was superb - I can't believe it was just your second go! I would love to share it with my fellow teachers at our next Professional Development staff meeting if that's ok!
I have just watched your video and was very impressed. The whole idea of gearing students up for their future excites me. I have only my laptop and one other computer in the classroom, My children are also 7. I am beginning to get my head around how best to make use of wikis in this environment. I’d love to here your thoughts.
In regards to "Innovators keep getting doors slammed in their faces" I feel your pain. I am a network admin at a K12 district. I was recently directed to block Youtube.com because there was some objectionable content. After doing so I immediately started getting requests from teachers to unblock it. They were all completely legitimate requests. I thought it was great that they were using the site for educational purposes and a shame that we were preventing them from doing so. If they are using Youtube today, maybe they will be blogging and using wiki's tomorrow. We need to let the teachers use technology and be very careful not to send a bad message. Otherwise they will just stop trying to innovate where technology is concerned. I wanted to get permission to unblock it so I started to keep a record of the requests. I eventually took the information downstairs and explained the situation. I was able to unblock youtube after they saw the light, but what will be next?
We are trying to get Wikis and blogs going in our district as means for teacher/student learning and communication. When I found your very nice concise slideshow that had the great explanation and the places to go for wiki help, I was so thrilled to have it all nicely condensed and organized and got ready to show it to a group of Librarians when...wham!! it is blocked. Of course, I was naive to think that JUST because your great blog gets thru, that this wonderful resource would as well.
Would there be a way to see it outside of that format? Would you allow us to use it outside of that format?
To “Meanwhile, innovators keep getting doors slammed in their faces!" I certainly can relate. I work for Baltimore City Public Schools, which treat blogs, YouTube, and even Google Image search as if they were purely for pornographers and terrorists. If I want to find a good image for a PowerPoint on the fly, Wikipedia is my best bet--until they decide to block that, too. I did find one good solution, though. Keepvid.com will allow you to save YouTube videos to your computer without any new software, although you might want to download the Applian FLV player from their site, since many other video players don't seem to have the necessary codecs. With this, I can show the cool student produced videos for Ovid's mythology that I found. Unfortunately, my students cannot submit their own videos on the school's computers.
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I have spent some time working on my first wiki today. I wanted to have a look at your flatclassroom project again and get inspired and find answers to my new questions. Here I am back to your blog to find this great presentation!
No more questions. Slide 50 answered me. Got it! Thanks.
I will be using my Corpus wiki with an English as a foreign language class at a language school (students aged 18+). The course starts soon and I will be blogging about this wikifying process in my ELT Notes blog, in case someone wants to have a look.
This is the first for me. Any comments will be welcome with a broad smile.
Wishing you all best with your presentation tomorrow,
Claudia
Buenos Aires, Argentina