Blogging, social networking and wikis in education

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by carolyn kick on December 17, 2008 at 6:38am

This is a great concept...as I have just started implementing the technology into professional development offerings in our district. We are, no doubt, still in the "out of comfort" zone in most cases. But that data on the impact on student learning would help promote the technology piece in PD in our district, especially with our administration. I know that this is the direction that we are headed and having a model to measure the efficacy of the online tools.

Permalink Reply by MJ Page on December 29, 2008 at 8:35am

hi, Scott,
I teach in both the face to face classroom and online. It is only my second year of teaching on line and my personal learning curve experience with 2.0 tools and applications is modest compared to others in this group. But the exciting part is we all learn form eachother. I agree with Will Richardson that before you can start using the tools with your students you have to work on using them on your own, then as I learn I can share more with my students, and fellow teachers.
I think we are still on the tip of the iceburge and there is lots more to learn for both teachers and students.
I just started blogging about my personal reflections on specific technolgoy tools http://mjpageeducation.blogspot.com/and I've started a wiki for teachers of sceondary business studies
http://smartbusinesseducation.wetpaint.com/
I've used a few activites with student but haven't set up anything to formally measure student engagment, or effectiveness in learning, just doing more each day to encourage students and appeal to mulitiple intelligences.

Permalink Reply by Carrie Thornthwaite on January 27, 2009 at 6:22pm

I'm teaching an online graduate technology class in which, for discussion purposes, I'm requiring my students to use LinkedIn, Twitter, wikis, as well as Classroom 2.0. At the end of the semester, I am going to poll them with SurveyMonkey to determine which sites they plan to continue using in their classrooms.... which they feel could be used best to enhance learning, etc.

Permalink Reply by Scott McDaniel on March 23, 2009 at 5:48am

Carrie,

I am interested in finding out how your project has gone so far? Has there been any informal or anecdotal feedback so far?

Permalink Reply by Lucas Cioffi on April 6, 2009 at 5:06pm

Hi Scott,

We've built a tool at DeepDebate.Org that is a good complement to wikis and blogs. It enables a very large number of people to have a structured conversation. It's advanced forum software that enables collaborative mapping of a conversation.

We first implemented it in Pennsylvania and we received this feedback from teachers and this feedback from students.

If you or anyone else on this list is interested in using it in the classroom, we'd be happy to offer our services pro bono. I've personally taught ten classes (grades 8-12) with it here in DC and also in PA, and it's always a lot of fun. The key element is that it challenges the students to really think before they write.

It could be used for the students within one classroom or among students in different schools. There are so many possibilities.

Drop me a line and I'll get you connected!
Email: lucas[at]deepdebate.org