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In this four part series, I cover tagging, review building a PLN with an iGoogle page, notes on wiki editing, and end up with Leadership notes. This is taken from a blog post for my ninth graders. This is an update to my first blog post: Wiki Wiki Teaching: The Art of Using Wiki Pages to Teach but truly represents most of my current thinking on wikis. How to Information: Project Help Wiki Current Digiteen Wiki Wiki Editing We met with the [ Digiteen ] teachers this week and this is where many students stare numbly at the screen and don't know what to do. You are doing "authentic" research - this means that you can't really go on some web page and copy information and have it be accurate. You can't google "individual awareness" and find what you need. Don't try - you are wasting your time. Here are guidelines for how you should spend your class time. I use this when I'm working on projects. 1) First 5 minutes of class - Read and ...

Spent some time today answering questions from Dr. Garcia's class about teaching.  Below are some of the questions and links to the blogs of the students that asked them. Please consider going to the blogs below and leaving your own thoughts. Inspiring conversation shows the power of our new interconnected world so bring these educators in with your thoughts and conversation! All of the students are listed on their wiki and I'll try to get to all of the conversations, but am not sure I'll be able to.  Would you help me? Dr. Garcia is also posting a summary and I'll definitely respond to that as well. Thank you. These students were asked to reflect upon the edutopia video of my classroom that they filmed last year. Maureen C asks: "Did you face any challenges in your teaching practices? For example, were there any times that students had trouble figuring out a task on their own and "shut down" instead of feeling empowered to learn more?...

I just sent this out to the Digiteen group and thought some of you working with wikis might like a few tips. (My students do call me the "wikinator" ;-)) Just a tip -- To get started, I always break it down for the kids.  I explain it like this. Students, when we have a wiki, there are two phases:  content creation and content editing and refinement. 1) Content Creation If the page is blank that is where we are now.  You cannot pick up an invisible desk- likewise, if nothing is there, you cannot edit an invisible wiki - NOTHING IS THERE. So, our first job is to create content.  I expect that today you should all add 150-200 words to this page and you will have a successful day. Remember, that what you say should have citations by linking to the item on the Internet. Also, if you want to talk about WHAT is on the page - do it on the discussion tab. Remember that when you come to class you should first: check the discussion tab and RESPOND - people feel ign...

Image via Wikipedia Spring in the US is such a busy time with "spring sports" and so many things going on including the end of the school year.  I'm trying to get my feet under me after a spate of trips (including the one to India.)  So, since I'll be grading until 2 am, I just thought to share a little bit with you about some of the ponderings running around in my head. No Child Left Behind is Long Overdue I've been thinking about the plan to introduce legislation here for the long-overdue revision of No Child Left Behind and was struck with an analogy (perhaps not a perfect one) with what is going on in education. Tests can only tell you so much. What I saw in my  minds eye is an old cartoon from the 70's where the hood of a car is up with the proverbial lady looking at the engine with the lovely figure -- the cartoon character whistles and then the lady with her head in the engine looks up and is the face of a cow with the cartoon character's jaw d...

In the PhysOrg.com article What Do Students Know? it basically underlines the fear that many have about the way that we are testing.  Granted, this is a niche area, (astrophysics) but we're teaching the names of planets and basic items, and yet students (and their teachers) have the following misconceptions: They think there is no gravity in space. They think that space telescopes are put in space to get them "closer." The don't know that the sun is a star. They think that there are stars closer than Pluto besides the sun. Other findings: "The SAO researchers studied how these apparently seductive misconceptions could distract students away from choosing the correct answer in multiple-choice tests. They argue that such "distractors" should be included in evaluation tests but note that most often are not, and therefore that results from tests designed to measure student understanding are misleading, and that evaluation of the pedagogy is therefo...

Image via Wikipedia Graphene: The Game Changer for Electronics Graphene is a 2-d form of graphite and was only first discovered in 2004 "when physicists from the University of Manchester and Institute for Microelectronics Technology in Chernogolovka Russia found a way to isolate individual graphen planes by peeling them off from graphite with Scotch tape." (definition quoted from Wikipedia see original paper at Electronic Fields in Atomically Thin Carbon Films .) Does anyone else find this horribly interesting?  According to PhysOrg.com, the five years since this discovery have been lightning fast: "Graphene has the potential to enable terahertz computing, at processor speeds 100 to 1,000 times faster than silicon . For a material that was first isolated only five years ago, graphene is getting off to a fast start." So, what started as some scientists using Scotch Tape and Graphite in the UK and Russia is now turning heads all over the world as we look...

Connecting globally can give you some disconnection too! Now that my students are so connected globally - literally EVERY class has them collaborating with other kids on a daily basis -- I spend so much time being the architect for their connections that my connections have somewhat frayed at the edges! Is this how it will look in the future? The teacher is busy building the framework for things and has to struggle to stay connected themselves? It isn't about a huge stack of papers any more but a chock full RSS reader with student assignments and a full email of items to do. Timebridge reminders and Google calendars , wikis to update, and websites to create. Between this and my new passion for making this body last a while longer (I LOVE RUNNING - anyone on Twitter has heard by now, probably) and handling my three children's schedules it is quite hard to spend time here talking to you.  I wish, by goodness, that I had time to do a weekly podcast or something to connec...

I have just got to take pictures of my room for you, just been so busy.  But this year, I wanted to wiki-fy my walls.  I want the very walls of my room to be places where students express and share what they are doing.  I've done this in two ways.  I have used velcro to stick small dry erase boards EVERYWHERE and also have used brightly colored duct tape to designate certain areas on my wall for certain types of things to be shared. But I think that perhaps what Angela Maiers shared Sunday Night on her blog is what I really want to do!  Idea Paint.   Their official Ideapaint websit e has some interesting applications for school but perhaps my question is... if Ideapaint works, why are we even buying dry erase boards?  Has anyone tested the heavy use of a school on this?  Is anyone using it now? So, let's try it out!  Also, I turned up a link for a free sample of Ideapaint from Momblognetwork -just fill out this form. IdeaPaint How ...

This wiki based site organizes videos that will help kids learn:  meet WatchKnow .  In fact, don't just meet watch know, edit it a bit while you're at it. How to Edit on WatchKnow Just one catch, dude -- the videos it indexes ARE HOSTED ON YOUTUBE!!!  So, can you allow youtube videos without allowing youtube in your school?  I don't know but I do know that again, we are faced with this seemingly age old discussion of adding some sort of layer on top of youtube videos that Bud the Teacher and I discussed some time back. (See his post: for Vicki: An Expanded Tweet ) and my original post on Youtube edu . Again, Bud keeps coming back to the point that somehow he thinks I'm advocating youtube censorship!  NO such thing.  This is about repurposing youtube and making it work in such a way to be usable for education.  I'm not sure yet, but suspect that something like WatchKnow will do just that: but those who filter are going to have to f...

Was totally intrigued by Mr. Bariexica's Honors British literature Wiki from Spring 2008. (He's northern hemisphere -- we need to stop using seasons and should rather use quarters, I think to bridge this hemisphere thing.) I think he's done a nice job of organizing.  Many teachers do take this approach -- one wiki for one course - however, I've found having a wiki for all of my classes and then archiving the old items and saving templates from the lesson plans to reuse for major items -- as well as let students see prior work of other students (which helps the learning curve considerably.)  (See my assignments from last week in Computer Science where I referred to work from prior years.) I particularly like the outline on the side of Mr. Bariexica's class consisting of the introduction, the major content, and then the class notes.  The only suggestion I'd give on class notes is to have them write their class notes in a Google Doc and embed the class notes...

These are my favorite apps, software, and sites for managing my life, home, classroom, and more.  Hope you enjoy and hope you share yours in the comments. Calendaring 1. Google Calendar Google Calendar is now and has been my calendar of choice for about a year and a half. I have a personal calendar for me that is set up to send me a text message at certain times before I have to be somewhere because I always forget what time it is!  My family and each child has a calendar (I set the kids appointments to automatically show up on the family calendar), and I use Google cal for my classes .   Each class and major project such as netgened has a calendar and I embed these calendars in all of the Nings, blogs, and wikis as needed to keep people apprised of what is happening. I print these calendars out for my classes and for the refrigerator! The greatest addition to the calendar is that now I keep my 5 most important calendars on my Apple iPod touch 16 GB (2nd Gene...