Why Use a Wiki?

I don't like wikis. Oh, I like Wikipedia well enough, but to make a website, no thanks. It's not like I don't like trying new things (not that wikis could be considered new anymore), but for me it is all around design- it is impossible to get a nice look and feel in a wiki.

Wikis are hard to beat when it comes to collaboration. The way they can track a document, keeping a log of the history so that it is nearly impossible to make a catastrophic mistake is fantastic. And some, like Wikispaces, which I used this week with some classmates, have a discussion feature which is pretty nifty too. Multiple threads can be started and tracked, but only on the page you begin the discussion from.

Sitting at the top of the wiki heap is Wikipedia. For those who have been without electricity for the past ten years, Wikipedia is a vast, user-generated encyclopedia covering every topic imaginable. (And if you can imagine one that isn't in Wikipedia, you should contribute an article on it!) So it is easy to see why one would use this wiki- to find information. But why would someone want to use a wiki s/he created?

Well, there are just too many answers to that question, but they all are centered on the same idea- collaboration. If you have a project requiring collaboration, a wiki can be much more convenient than say, email. All the communication of the project can be held in the wiki. Each member can contribute to the wiki, changing anything s/he thinks needs reworked. All contributors can see what everyone else has done, so the process is transparent. It's a thing of beauty.

Except it's not. Beautiful, that is. My classmates and I used a wiki this week to collaborate on how to use Wikipedia in education. Our wiki worked well. We shared ideas, changed a bunch of stuff, added, deleted, reworked, futzed, and came up with a decent product. So I can't argue with the functionality. It is the form I dislike. The web designer in me cringes when I look at the bland, off balance pages. Simply put, it's not pretty.

So OK, maybe I do like wikis a little. Kinda. I just don't like the way they look!

Connections Made!

In my blog titled Making the Connection, our blogical discussion was a peaceful one. We didn’t have much disagreement over the concern I posted about the challenges of making connections with students through online, rather than face-to-face, courses. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a meaningful conversation. Oh no, far from that!

Robin, ever the encouraging soul, believed that a teacher’s compassionate tone could convey caring online. Mindy suggested it would help to have synchronous online activities to foster a sense of connection. Beth reminded us there may be students who actually participate more readily in an online environment. Shannon shared the concern that, for some people, it is much more difficult to connect with person through a screen. Jenn added a reminder that non-visual learners will be challenged by online learning. 

It was Courtney who reminded us that the use of visuals, including video, can be a powerful connector. And Linda reinforced the idea that connections can be made, by reminding us how we already feel connected to those we have taken a course with previously. Mark R. made the provocative point that we may want to focus on helping students further themselves in a career, and that students will remember what they learned from the course, not the facilitator. The reminder that today’s students are very used to connecting through technology came from Julie. And, while Mark C. echoed that thought, he also shared a concern of how important the personal relationship can be to a student. 

At the same time, Tyler worried that children may even lose the ability to communicate face-to-face. Melissa has seen the importance of building relationships, and worried that the emphasis on testing is challenging our ability to develop relationships even in face-to-face classes. And Jami reminded us that although the connections may not be as deep, there is untold value in online education for students who are homebound or need alternatives. 

The depth of this discussion demonstrated the thoughtfulness and concern of educators when it comes to our students. We care. We want the best for them. These qualities, along with tech tools, some of which have yet to be invented, will shepherd us along in this journey to provide meaningful, high quality learning experiences online. We will find a way to make the connection.

Ed U K Shun

OK, it must be geek night. Cause I just spent half an hour redoing something I had already done. For fun. Kinda.

OK really it was for fame and glory, but don't tell anyone.

So what was I doing? Creating a public page in bloglines.com that had an RSS feed from all our class blogs in it.

There, I said it.

Social Bookmarking Plan

Social Bookmarking with Students

Introduction

This lesson is our first assignment within the journalism unit. In this lesson you will learn to use the social bookmarking site diigo.com to publicly and privately save bookmarks of websites you visit.

Purpose

Bookmarks are a way of keeping track of websites you may want to return to later. You may have used bookmarks in your web browser (like Safari or Chrome) at school or at home. You may use them on your phone or tablet. But when you use bookmarks in these ways, they are only saved to the device you are currently using. By saving bookmarks to diigo.com, you can create bookmarks which you can access from any browser, even one you have never used before!

Actions

Follow these steps to begin using diigo.com:

1. In a browser, go to diigo.com

2. Click on the “Get Diigo Now” button.

3. Create an account. 

4. Make a note of your username and password. Save it on your device.

5. Login to your diigo account.

Creating Groups

Saving bookmarks is great, but if you use diigo a lot, like I do, then you can soon have hundreds of bookmarks. This can quickly become an organizational nightmare. Do you really want to scroll through hundreds of bookmarks to find what you want? Of course not. So that is where Groups become very useful.

Groups are simply collections of bookmarks, a way of organizing bookmarks by project or category. You can create a group just for yourself, or you can create a group which you plan on sharing with others. This is social bookmarking, when you create a collection of bookmarks other people can use and benefit from.

Actions

Follow these steps to create a diigo group (you must be logged in to do this):

1. Find the My Groups link at the top of the page.

2. Click on the Create a Group button near to top of the page.

3. Type a Group Name. I would suggest “YourName Journalism”

4. Notice the URL fills in automatically, using your chosen group name.

5. Fill-in a quick description. Suggestion: “A group to track the news sites I use in my journalism project.”

6. Check the Education - K12 category.

7. Change the list to Private- so that only I and others in the class can use it.

8. Leave it Searchable.

9. Leave it Apply to join -moderator approval required. We will all request access from each other.

10. Select All group members for Who can invite new members. 

11. Enter the security code as two numbers, one from the picture, one as a big number in the text box below the numbers.

12. Click Create my group.

Joining Groups

You can create a group just for yourself and not share it with anyone. But for this assignment we are all sharing our groups with each other. 

Actions

1. In the diigo search box, type one of the names of your classmates’ groups. 

2. Click on the result.

3. Ask to Join that group.

4. Respond to your classmates request by allowing them to join your group.

Using RSS

RSS, Rich Site Summary, or sometimes called Really Simple Syndication is a system for distributing content from an online publisher to an end user. Often those online publishers are blogs which all people to post content simply by typing or adding a photo. Many blogs then allow comments on the posts. Think Facebook or Flikr.

In my classroom I plan on using the web-based RSS syndicator called Feedly. I will use this service because it also has an app which my students can use on their iPads. Here’s what I plan to do…

My Integrated Technology students will download and signup for Feedly. They will then search for some interesting feeds relating to technology. Once a week they will write a blog entry which summarizes one post they found particularly interesting. They will then post their entry on our Integrated Technology blog. Students will then be asked to comment on at least one other student’s post.

Making the Connection

For the past year I have been taking courses toward earning a Master’s in Online Teaching. From that statement, one could reasonably assume I am interested in, or even passionate about, online learning. Certainly I am interested. But where’s the passion?

For me, the passion in teaching has always been about relationships with students. The teaching jobs I have felt were my most important jobs were the ones where I thought I really made a difference in students’ lives. When I can make a difference, when I can go home at the end of the day knowing that something I did really made a difference to another person, then that is a good day.

Yes it wonderful to be passionate about a subject. I know many incredible teachers who are passionate about what they teach. I would love to be able to take their classes, and absorb their subject through their enthusiastic teaching. And on my best days I too am passionate about some of the things I teach. But for me, never does that passion trump the passion to connect, to make whatever we are doing have meaning in the life of a student, to help a student feel heard and cared about and OK in the world.

So I struggle with the idea of online learning. How will I connect with students? How will they be able to know that I care about them? Will they put enough effort into a making the connection happen? Obviously I’m not the only one worried about this. In their Online and Hybrid Learning conference Rutger’s University held a workshop called Best Practices for Building Student-Teacher Relationships in Online Learning you can find a video which discusses this issue. Further evidence that I am not alone in my hand-wringing can be found in this blog at Edutopia, Where MOOCs Miss the Mark: The Student-Teacher Relationship.

In my current job as an alternative education teacher, I have many of my high school students for  all four years of high school. Of course, some join my program in later years, but the point is I really get to know them. By the time they are seniors I may have had them in as many as seven or eight classes over the four years. I know the moment they walk through the door what kind of day they are having, how rough last night was on them, if they will be able to attend to their learning. Where will all that knowing come from when all I have is a screen?

There is a ray of hope here. Today’s students are digital natives, they have grown up using computers and digital devices all their lives. They have also grown-up online. My high schoolers all have Facebook pages, many use Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, etc. A lot of them used to use MySpace. So they are comfortable with the online milieu in ways my generation is not. Perhaps they will find it easier to bridge that divide than I can even imagine. 

But still, what if I am right? What if I lose that connection? What if I lose the very students I am trying to help?

Everything in Moderation

So, I found an interesting blog last week. It was interesting for a bunch of reasons, one being that it was being written by some local high school students. I got excited. I posted a response on one of their posts.

And I waited.

And waited.

What was I waiting for? The moderator to approve my comment. She still hasn't.

So here's what I have to say about that. If you are going to require a moderator's approval on your blog, then have a way of knowing when someone comments so you can quickly either approve or delete the thing. Otherwise your readers will lose interest in posting and, these days, probably lose interest in reading your blog as well.

My post appears below:

Gabby, I really like this post. It is so important to remind young women that they have the power to decide what is important in their lives. You did a nice job touching on some issues I’m sure are on the minds of young ladies in high school.

I’m also posting here to let you know I posted about your McMoments school blog. You can find that post here:http://edutate.blogspot.com/2014/03/i-googled-high-school-student-blogs.html

Plus I like Top 5 lists!

The blog I posted to may be found here: Five Things You Should Stop Worrying About

But I doubt you will see my comment there!

Student Blogs

I googled “high school student blogs”. My course assignment was to find an interesting student blog, write about it in my blog, then post to the student’s blog, letting them know about my post.  What I didn't expect to find was a really active blog written by students just across the Casco Bay Bridge in Portland, Maine! The students of McAuley High School have a very active blog, McMoments, which apparently has its roots in the old school newspaper.

I found this interesting because I tried to publish an online newspaper a few years ago at my high school, with limited success. The principal at the time was very concerned about content, and so insisted on approving each article before publication. Also, for the same reasons, the paper was not opened up for commenting, so did not take advantage of  Web 2.0 technologies. And because it wasn’t interactive, the students didn’t have much interest in it! It died a quiet death, despite having a couple of very talented and dedicated editors.

What impressed me about the blog is both the quality of the writing and the breadth of content.  I was also impressed by the frequency of posting by students, leading me to wonder if this is part of a class, rather than an after school journalism club. In particular, I liked that several authors, students at this private, all girls school, focused on issues important to women or self-esteem. An example of this would be the post, “Five Things You Should Stop Worrying About”.

The McMoments blog makes me want to try again with an online newsletter. Perhaps this time I will integrate it into an English class, encouraging my students to write high quality pieces for all the world to see.

Create and Share

When it comes to technology use, today’s students are not the same as the students of 30 years ago. This is not nostalgia, it is fact. Today’s students have never known a world without the web, without broadband, without wifi, or even without cell phones. They are different.

They have grown up both knowing how to plug-in, and expecting to be able to. They now carry devices, smartphones, which allow access to unlimited sources of information and services. They expect to interact with the world using these digital tools.

Web 2.0 differs from the previous version of the web in that it is not static, but active. With Web 2.0 comes the ability to create content on the web and instantly share it with the world. Today’s students do that. Everyday. They create and share videos, pictures, and tweets. They post to countless services, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and so on, create and share.

My classroom practice needs to reflect that reality. I need to harness the energy, the creativity, the desire to share, and channel it into processes which create products demonstrating learning. And I need to do it in such a way that it meshes with, not conflicts with, my student’s existing abilities in these areas.

There is one way, however, that today’s students are not different than the students of 30 years ago. They are still impulsive, can still have poor judgement, and still have brains whose prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain responsible for decision making) is not yet fully developed. So sometimes what they do online is impulsive and not well thought out. Thus my classroom practice needs to include checks and balances to account for such behaviors.

I’ve been using blogs, wikis, websites, and podcasts in my practice for many years. But I feel as though they have always be add-on products, not built into the flow of learning. This is what I seek- the blog needs to disappear into the flow, becoming just another step along the path.