Thing 7: Wiki Wiki - Quicky Quicky

After having read Vicki Davis' blog post Wiki Wiki Teaching about her first experience using a wiki in the classroom, I am sold. Vicki is an innovator in using technology in the classroom and her style of writing makes understanding the enormity behind what she is doing easy. We as teachers always fear: Did they get it? Could they apply it? They really seemed to understand what we did but I was right there offering help if needed. What's going to happen when they are asked this on a high stakes test? Have they retained the material and used it enough that they will recognize it then? Will they be able to move to the abstract and answer the questions about the content we studied? Using a wiki can alleviate this fear because the students are doing all of that. They are transferring what they learned to real life application. And once that's been accomplished remembering the content is no longer a concern. They have made it their own. I know that there is research that shows that this type of infused technology is beneficial for students. I wonder what the stats say about how much better a student who has experienced infused technology does on a high stakes test as compared to one who is not. (I guess a hunting I will go.)

I definitely see a wiki in my future. I will be starting a poetry unit shortly and I was kicking around some ideas about a class poem, where each students added their thoughts to a poem I started using a wiki space. After looking over these wikis other ideas have started popping into my head.

http://gowest.wikispaces.com/ My students love Social Studies, so when I saw the link to this site I decided to take a peek. It was an interesting way to have the students collaborate. I like the way the teacher had different jobs set up. Tasks were very clear. I also liked that she used other software programs to help meet the needs of the particular job; i.e. kidspirations and time Timeliner. I just wonder if there are some online tools that she could have used to make the wiki more accessible to the students after hours.

http://kublerreading.wikispaces.com/ I taught this teacher had an interesting way to get her students talking about books. Let the discussion and collaboration take place online.

http://kcountingbook.wetpaint.com/?t=anon In the third grade math Investigations curriculum we have to create a class collection of 1000 things. I thought we could do a similar activity to this kindergarten counting book. It's really easy. I was thinking it would be an excellent way to introduce the class to wikis. A fairly easy activity that would allow them to learn the technology behind the wiki.

http://monsonclassroom.wikispaces.com/ When I saw this I started rethinking my previous idea of extending the kindergarten counting book to 1000. This teacher has a different activity for each month and the goal is to collect 1000 responses to that activity. Another great idea. More for me to ponder.

Right after watching the little video about wikis I immediately wanted to start one for a trip some friends and I were thinking of taking. I was going to start one on one of the sites that Caroline mentioned but I wasn't sure if I'd have to pay since it wasn't for educational purposes. I then remembered FB (Facebook). I immediately went to FB to see if I could start a wiki. I started a new group instead. I thought would be easier to use that rather than email for coordinating our ideas, etc. Don't know if any of you use FB or are a part of a group on there, but I think it's slightly different than a wiki. Everyone who is a part of the group can edit the page but the way it's set up is different. I really am too new at all this to really know. But it's working just like the hands said it would in the video.

Thing 6: To Diigo or Not to Diigo? That is the Question

I must admit, Thing 6 took me a while to do. I'm still not sure I've done everything I was supposed to. But I did join Diigo, I created an account, uploaded all my bookmarks from my classroom computer and tagged them. It was a little weird seeing how many people were actually taking a look at my bookmarks. I felt a little like a Diigoneesta. Feel free to check them out at:

http://www.diigo.com/user/rpizza?tab=3

I was at a PLC meeting last Thursday and brought Diigo up as a way for AES to communicate with the ArtNow team. (Just a quick aside. We are collaborating with ArtNow to infuse art into our curriculum.) Anyway we were discussing how to share information and I mentioned the Web 2.0 course I was taking. I explained what Diigo was, I'm sure not very intelligently, but the ArtNow folks seemed interested in it and the possibilities it might offer.

I actually convinced one colleague to join, which she did immediately and befriended me. I'm going to attempt to challenge her to contact Caroline and keep using Diigo til the end of the course.

So to answer the question posed in my title, "To Diigo or not to Diigo?" I say Diigo, I defintely can see the benefit for having my bookmarks available online. The ease in which they can be shared and added to makes it a valuable to tool for me professionally. I can work anywhere ~ even at home. Getting my colleagues to join makes it even more a more useful tool than emailing. Instead of having to exchange emails about sites we visited and wanted to share, they can just log on and peruse them at their leisure.

Thing 5a: Feeding and Using Your Reader

Burp! That was some meal. My compliments to the chef. I have so much left over I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. If feeding the starving people of the world were as easy as feeding my Google Reader then there wouldn't be anyone starving.

When I opened my reader today I was totally overwhelmed. There were 75 new feeds and I had no desire to sit at my desk and go through them. I marked them all read and moved on. I went directly to the blogs that had sparked my interest when I set up the reader and looked for something of interest there. I definitely need to weed through my list of subscriptions and keep only those that truly interest me. Hats off to anyone who can manage more than 2 or 3 subscriptions. This is definitely one of those skills that I will have to build up slowly.

One of the blogs that I had subscribed to was Student 2.0. This one had grabbed my interest because it was a blog maintained by students. I was interested to see the types of things they posted and had conversations about. Well, this one that really caught my attention...

Morgante Pell, a high school sophomore and web developer, posted a blog entitled: Of Creativity & Art Published by Morgante Pell on November 19, 2008 in Meta, on Student 2.0, which I just finished reading in my Google Reader. WOW! What is creativity? Is it art? I almost fell off my chair when I read that the author of this blog was only 17. He really hit the nail on the head. Not only about the difference in the meanings of the two words but how school systems and conventionalism squelch it. I agree with him 100%. I'm so excited that I work in a county where we are thinking outside the box through Arts Now and this course Web 2.0. If we want creative thinkers to lead us in the 21st Century we will need to start fostering their abilities that "transcend tradition." Morgante states: "Writing thousands of 5-paragraph essays will give you perfect form and will make you a very precise writer, but it will not make you a great and innovative one. " I couldn't agree more. Check out his personal blog at Newly Ancient, it's insightful.

Thing 3: Getting Started with RSS

I just read the Friday Five: Create, Express, Learn with Primary Source Material which is was a blog posted at the Infinite Thinking Machine. It essentially spoke of the endless primary resources available to our students today. It is overwhelming how much our students can accomplish with these tools on the web. 15 years ago if a student wanted to create a multimedia presentation they would have to purchase a computer and software and then go through endless tutorials to figure out how to make the presentation. Technology has come such a long way that many of these tools are available online for free. And all it really takes to learn to create is such a presentation are a few clicks. I guess what is even more amazing to me is how infrequently these tools are used in the classroom.

One of the websites linked to the Blog was is http://www.kitzu.com/. I found this site to be similar to the Georgia DOE site that archives lesson plans for teachers to access. All of the Kitzu kits are aligned to the California standards, but they could be easily adapted to Georgia's. There is a multitude of content. These kits make it easy to infuse technology into the classroom with little preparation time on the part of the teacher. What a great resource to help us get started on our infusion journey. Perhaps this is something this group of Georgia educators could start putting together. Or better yet maybe we could connect with the authors of the kitzu.com and see if we can work collaboratively to include the GPS on their site....just food for thought.

Thing 2: Blogging Begins with Reading

• What do you notice about the genre of blog writing in general? Blogging is a global conversation that allows people to communicate like they never have before. Our ideas become global just like our posts. What a powerful tool.
  


• (How) is blog reading different from other types of reading? How is it similar? Reading a blog is like reading anything else. You need to be able to recognize all the letters that form words and link the words to the ideas presented by the author. Its like a trip to the library. Read what interests you and leave the rest. What makes it different is that you can engage in an immediate conversation with the author and other readers. This is very different from the typical trip to the library. As book readers you are a passive participant in the work. Bloggers are active participants in what the work will become. Books (et al.) are a masterpieces written by an artist. Blogs bring many artist to the canvas, allowing for a collaborative work to emerge, a place where ideas converge and become more than what the initial author intended. That's how it's different.
  


• (How) is blog writing different from other types of writing? How is it similar? How does commenting contribute to the writing and meaning-making? In the same respect blogging takes on the same form. The sharing of ideas makes you mold what you're writing differently. New ideas, bring new thought processes that can change the course your writing takes.
  


• Is there a "blogging literacy?" How does blogging affect the way we read and write? Like any other fad that splashes onto the scene blogging has terminology that goes with it, just like gaming. In order to become a literate blogger you need to learn how a blog works. Most anything we read we read from left to right. However when you read an newspaper article you need to learn to read the columns in the same order. Depending upon how the blog is set up, to understand the conversation you need to read from the beginning. Some blogs have the oldest information first so you would read it conventionally. Others flip it so that the newest information is first. If you want to understand the conversation you need to find the beginning of the thread and read on.
  


• (How) can blogging facilitate learning? I think its an informal, safe environment for students to practice reading and writing on a variety of subjects. Because it's a safe environment where there thoughts and ideas will be respected they will begin to think outside the box and perhaps together our youth can start thinking about ways they can impact their world positively. Because it's global hopefully their knowledge of other cultures and communities will make them more tolerant.

I read, Why I Don’t Assign Homework by Dan Meyer, because I was recently having a conversation about this at school and I wanted to see the thinking that went behind Dan's policy. I knew that there was plenty of research out there supporting his decision not to assign his students homework, but I also knew that I didn't agree.



Once I started reading his post and some of the comments it became abundantly clear that he and others were speaking of older students in middle and high school. Perhaps for them this is the path, but for children just beginning to learn to read and calculate; homework is a valuable tool. It gives them the opportunity to practice and become proficient at the new skills.



Much of what he stated in his post was true. By the time these kids get to high school there is no sense in assigning homework. The top kids breeze through it and the rest don't bother. But just think if every elementary school teacher assigned homework, expected it to be done to the best of the students ability and then took the time to review it; if the parents of those same students also started to take partial responsibility in their children's education, by the time those kids got to high school they might not need the extra practice.



I've been teaching for 20 + years. I've seen struggling students not only close the gaps but excel. Due in part to

• maximizing learning time in school


• to well thought out homework assignments that give students the opportunity to practice in the areas they are weak in or challenge others


• giving these students the confidence they need to know they can do it


• letting the parents know that they are an integral part to their children's success

I read in Courtney Purcell's post: According to Marzano, assigning homework in elementary school does not lead to significant increases in percentile points, but there is a value to assigning it. I think helping youngsters and their parents take an active role in their education has a lot of value. I also think that having a consistent homework policy within each school is just as important. I would encourage teachers on each grade level to determine goals for the year and then maximize students learning of those particular objectives by creating homework assignments to meet that end. For instance, one of the third grade goals is to have every child reading at 110 words per minute by the years end. If that's what the state expects and I need to facilitate, one of my homework assignments is going to be about building this fluency.

In essence, if elementary school teachers prepared students for what was coming not just what is now perhaps homework wouldn't be such an issue in middle and high school.

I'd be interested to read what other elementary school teachers think about this. Come to think of it I'd also be interested to see how middle and high school teachers feel about this. i look forward to reading more posts.