where someone posted that at what point was it just another way to do a worksheet. and I'm ambivalent about that. I try to keep the language very real for the students, yet I follow the book so I don't go too far off on a tangent and spend 5 weeks on TO BE verbs! We have done podcasts, vokis, Comic Life ads, Scrapblogs, and pictures with text. We've also used our cell phone with the Voki, and we post it all on our wikis. It was cool, but they also had to use their language, so it contributed to their learning. the Vokis can measure writing by using the computer generated voice. It pronounces wrong if it is spelled wrong. Or it can measure their oral language skills using their cellphones to talk irectly through their Vokis.
The other reason I use technology is because it makes for a flat world experience. In other words, I think that foreign language without a context in which one would use it is meaningless and boring. But a worldwide reach is another matter. I have a live feed on my wikispace, and since I blog on La Coctelera.com in Spain as well as comment here on CR20 and other educatior sites, My wikispace and those of my students was also mentioned in a blog post in Spain, Aulablog21, So I have a lot of visitors from around the world.
I have links to some of my best students' wikis on my own wiki also, so they also get hits from people around the globe. The students know I will only link to their site if it is excellent so it makes them more focused on the quality of their content. So today with TAKS state testing for another grade, 8th grade had a quiet workday, and I had some in the lab learning how to do wikis. A few of my Spanish students were there, working on improving their site so I would consider putting a link to it on mine. Wow! What a thrill to se students in their spare time doing Foreign Language work on their own!
I didn't learn it all before I started, I started by just wanting to find a way to use the social networks to practice using adjectives to describe their friends. And it has grown form there. I do need to learn more about blogs and how to really get the kids interested in doing them, but I think I'm going to just have to dive into the deep end and do it. I think if they know that they will get hits from other countries, they'll go for it!!
Just like us, they follow after prestige and recognition!
Cheers for a great topic!
Lisa…
h grade classes here in Israel and students in 2 Jewish afternoon schools in New Hampshire. The original idea was to have the students share information about their lives and communities through a private wiki on wikispaces, and in fact we got the wiki set up and photos and introductory messages were posted by most of the children. One of my counterparts in New Hampshire even posted videos of his students to the wiki. However, after translating the messages of 70 or so children from Hebrew to English, and vice versa, I realised that I wouldn't be able to keep this up throughout the whole of the school year and in fact we deserted the wiki project.
What success have we had?
All 3 schools sent Hanuka gifts by snail mail, these included handmade greetings cards and a token gift,there was a lot of excitement as each child received his parcel.
We are in the final stages of publishing a joint Newsletter about Jerusalem for the Jerusalem Day celebrations. The children's texts, games, pictures and comics will be published to the dormant wiki and printed out on paper.
Advice, be realistic about your own capabilities and those of your students. If there is a language barrier, choose your tools and mode of communication with care.…
nts on mine so they won't lose them. I post exampoles of what I want them to do there as well. The kids post joint projects like podcasts and Voki's to practice their oral language, and we post pictures and describe friends to use our grammar rules correctly. The kids also make comment pages or post other interesting things about themselves and since they can email each other, they use it as a social networking site. My next project is to write to other students who use wikispaces in the target language. One has even started another wiki on her own where she gives Dear Abby-type advice to other teens.
I also used it once so students could write their assignments from the book, but I had a couple students copy and paste their assignment so that went away. :) This week and next we will be writing and illustrating ads (using Comic Life maybe?) and posting them on our wikis. We also will be posting some iMovies on them.
I think there are lots of uses.... even just listening to our project playlist while we work and do exercises in our online book. The kids love it!
Good luck!…
Students were in touch with each other mainly through their blogs (we use classblogmeister.com .......my blog can be found at http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=108026) and we even attempted a global project on wikispaces, where students were grouped together to write about their respective communities.
This year, I'll have the same number of students spread out over 3 classes, with one of them being a grade 7 class (11-13 years old), while the other 2 are grade 8 classes (12-14 years old).
I'm willing to take on anything from just getting students to comment on one anothers blogs to actually working together in virtual group settings. As I said, I'm pretty new to classroom 2.0 and am hoping to take a back seat in order to learn more.
If this interests you, get back to me, and I'll start off by putting a link to you classroom blog so that my kids can get to know yours.
Let me know what you think.
Take care.
Manny da Luz
Deer Park P.S.
Toronto, ON…
up between classes, although your project sounds pretty open-ended.
Take it slow. And watch how they use the wiki. Try to get them to put as much communication on the discussion tab as possible. My students found the mail feature so similar with IM that they embraced that initially and so we lost a lot of the record of learning and interaction.
With lots of people editing pages, stuff can get lost. While wikispaces has a way to deal with this I have found it useful to have a couple of students begin the wiki part of the project earlier than the rest and create an initial page with a lot of links to pages waiting to be filled in. Once that is done there is room for everyone to work. You could have lists of content for that page group generated to get you started. This might prevent some headaches your first time through.
Monitor everything you can. I use the recent changes link, watching the edits and discussion sections. That helps a greatly. I am currently running a site with almost 400 students (mwvsicencefair.wikispaces.com). One hundred eighty students will keep you busy- but it is awesome to watch how they learn together.
Good Luck!…
dent work, etc. Minimal technology as far as integration goes.
Another 5th grade teacher has a website (a free Wikispace site) and a blog. She posts homework, the students can post writing samples and help edit other's work. It is a very engaging. Is it "in the classroom"? No. It's all after-school, at home engagement. It does, however, make this teacher look like she is integrating technology 100%.
Building a free website using a tool like Wikispaces.com or Blogspot.com is a good way to easily "integrate" technology into your class. Post homework, have your students contribute and edit pages, etc. It can all be done from home so it is not an issue if your room doesn't have computers/internet. It makes you look like a cutting edge, tech savvy, engaging teacher.
You could also get some iPads, a laptop, projector, SmartBoard, teach with nothing but technology and have everything done digitally. I know teachers who aspire to and work towards a total digital classroom.
To each their own. Using technology in the classroom is only as effective as the teacher's ability and willingness to integrate it.
Start small and work your way up. No harm in using technology. Missing out on opportunities if you don't...…
uses.
Resources4Learning - this wiki I created for Student Resources. My thought behind using a wiki was so my teachers and I could add curriculum links for students to one space.
Runkle Technology - this wiki is a student showcase of work. Teachers and parents love this wiki.
Resources4Teaching - this is used as a professional development space for my teachers. If there's any training or tutorials we're doing I can post to this wiki.
I used a wiki with my 7th grade technology class last year, as a way for them to share their work on our Media Literacy unit. Unfortunately, within a week, a couple students wrote inappropriate things on each other's pages and I had to stop its use with that group. This year, in order for students to collaborate and comment on each others ideas, I've been using Edmodo.
Please let me know if you have any questions at all.
:) Jenny…
Added by Jenny Murphy at 7:25pm on February 6, 2011
e thinks its great.
I feel like "getting" information (via RSS) is only the first step towards making a lasting change. A logical second step is providing an avenue for educators to discuss/share what they're reading. This is where Ning comes in to play. I have setup a Ning for the staff to use to share resources, discuss ideas, etc. With this "setup" in mind, I have a few questions for the Classroom 2.0 community:
1) Has anyone else tried this sort of approach? If so, how has it been going so far? We're off to a slow start as far as "sharing" goes...I'm guessing this is pretty typical.
2) What do you see as the pros/cons of using Ning as a collaboration tool? (We had tried wikispaces previously, but it was not very user-friendly for the discussions we were looking to take place). What type of changes would you make to Ning if you were able to do so? In other words, what features seem to be missing from Ning that you wish you had...or that discouraged you from using it in the first place?…
.
Wiki pages are available based on Subject. There is also Motivational, Informative, and Humorous. The idea is that educators can share their success of using video software and student created digital stories with the rest of us in ONE CENTRAL LOCATION. I am sure all of us teachers are looking for samples to share with our students, but finding them can be very difficult.
We have YouTube, SchoolTube, and TeacherTube, but sifting through there can be tough. This site would offer all of us a Central Location. I got the idea from the Moving Forward Wiki where he had blog links that were subject specific and thought we could do the same thing.
I want some opinions, ideas, Wikispaces advice, etc from you all. Do you think this will work? Am I wasting time? If I had some favorite videos, I would post them, but I don't. You all might, so I thought you might want to help me get the ball rolling. Any advice and/or criticism would be GREAT!
Here is the Wiki: EmbedEduVideos…
my leading two options:
1. Create an alphabetized table on this wiki page into which students add their book review.
Pro: easy and doesn't require lots of work by a teacher to transfer the reviews onto the wiki. Entries are alphabetized by book title.
Con: Requires students to carefully edit a single page with all of the other book reviews. Requires students to add new rows, hyperlink, etc., fairly advanced editing that they are not familiar with. No way to easily alphebetize by both book title and author last name.
2. Use Google Doc Form embedded in the wiki to receive student submissions.
Pro: Easy for students to do. Quick setup, very simple.
Con: Teacher must copy/paste student submission onto the wiki. Not real-time.
Here's what I need help with:
1.Is there a way to send the data collected via a Google form somewhere? In other words, can a form automatically populate a wiki page?
2. Any suggestions on how to create an automated index of book reviews by both book title and author using wikispaces and or Google Docs?…
Added by John Sowash at 11:04am on January 12, 2010