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Wikis and Blogs in Education
The title was a bit of an 'in' joke. I was going to present on screencasting as well but it was just going to be toooo much.
As with the VoiceThread I wanted to focus on the why rather than the how of wikis and blogs. So much professional development is about how to put an image in or how to embed content but doesn't address the "show me the educational value" side of the equation.
I got good feedback, other than a couple of people who wanted more time to do the how. Oh well, I guess I will have to organise some follow-up sessions.
Picnik, minus the ants
Educational use:
Any time you have students working on wikis, blogs, VoiceThreads, Photostory, PowerPoints, you name it, there is a use for this application.
V is for VoiceThread
- Upload images
- Comment via microphone or keyboard
Genius!
I am presenting the educational rationale for using VoiceThread to staff at my school tomorrow. Here is the slideshow:
China shoots off own foot
Not really a newsflash but something has got me thinking: China is sabotaging the education of it's children.
I sit typing this in Urumqi (Wikipedia link), I am lucky enough to be on a school trip here. I won't be able to view this post when I am finished because the Chinese government blocks access to Blogger and Wordpress blogs amongst others. http://www.blogger.com/ isn't blocked, just everything with blogspot in the URL.
Last year during the Summer holidays I went to Beijing to do a Mandarin short course, I had set a wiki based assignment for my science students to work on. However, the Chinese government was also blocking PBwiki so for two weeks I could not give my students any feedback on their work.
The Chinese government blocks blogs and wikis because it fears them as tools of freedom of expression. There have been a number of high-profile cases where Chinese citizens have been persecuted for what they have written. I don't wan't to get into the politics of right and wrong. That is the Chinese government's decision to make.
However, while the growth of use of Web 2.0 tools in schools in other countries is proceeding apace, China, with its reluctance to give people access to these tools is potentially cramping the educational opportunities for its students.
Of course, students could access these tools through a proxy so why does the Chinese government bother?
This post might be flagged by some bot and read by a member of the communist party because of key words in the text. So if you are Chinese, and reading this in China as part of your job as an internet sensor. Think about how this restrictive policy may affect the future of your country and have a word to your bosses about it. Maybe it is time to change.
Tools in my pocket: 7 Things I take into the classroom
- Sony Ericsson K810i: My phone.Where would I be without it? Alarm, timer, stopwatch, calculator, calendar, camera, voice recorder... I've used all of these functions and more. There is a whole other post there waiting for me to write it.
- Jawbone Bluetooth Headset: Yes, I look like a dork. But I am just starting to explore using it with my interactive whiteboard to screencast parts of my lessons. I can also use it to amplify my voice through the computer and class speakers if I have a hearing-impaired student.
- Omiz Bluetooth Dongle: So that the headset can connect with the computer and so I can zap photos straight to the screen from my phone.
- Interactive Whiteboard Pen: My interactive whiteboard isn't much use without it.
- 8GB Imation USB Flash Drive: When there is a software failure on my classroom computer; browser trouble; Adobe reader isn't working; Office won't start up; Media Player on the fritz. I plug in my trusty stick loaded with PortableApps and fire up Firefox or Sumatra PDF portable or Open Office or VLC media player. I also carry the installation files for various pieces of licensed school software so that I can easily repair or reinstall components.
- Multiformat Card Reader: For getting student's photos off of their cameras and phones and onto the server for their PowerPoints and reports. Okay, maybe this isn't always in my pocket, but when I know that we are doing something with photos, I chuck it in.
- Regular, Garden Variety, Whiteboard marker: For when all else fails... always have a plan B
Encyclopedia of Life
It is an ambitious project aimed at compiling information on every catalogued species, that's no small task when there are 350,000 documented species of beetle alone! Nonetheless they have made a start with 25 exemplar pages like the one for the mosquito below.
"That doesn't sound ike much of an achievement!" I hear you say. The exemplar pages are rich with knowledge: text, images, video, and are the 'ideal' that the EOL is aiming for. There are also tens of thousands of species pages that are on their way to getting there and 1 million 'minimal' pages that need fleshing out.
In the meantime this is another blow to the development of student research skills. It's all there for them.
Comparison: Google Sites vs Wikispaces vs PBwiki
How does it stack up when compared with two of the current most popular wiki providers to educators?
PBwiki: I have used PBwiki on the past, it was my first 'wiki love'. I administered a wiki that was used by 80+ students who created over 600 pages. It was mostly stable but the major problem was that students had difficulty with formatting. They kept expecting it to act like Word and for all that the editor is supposedly WYSIWYG: WYS is not always WYG. In particular they found tables tricky and formatting around images.
I spent quite a bit of time on their forums, there were some helpful users but the prevalence of spam made it look like the support staff were not keeping on top of things. They have since migrated the forums to a more professional looking provider so let's hope that support has improved.
I am now really looking forward to PBwiki 2.0. I received notification of an impending invite to the beta so I'll let you know how it goes once I have signed up and played around. One of the most highly anticipated features is page level access which seems to have been implemented with teachers in mind. It will enable the admin to restrict a student's access to only their pages, their group's pages, or their course pages depending on what you want the wiki to do.
Wikispaces: I have been using Wikispaces more often than PBwiki of late because I like the clean lines, all of it's components seem better integrated and because they give so much more storage space. It also looks a little like Wikipedia so students have that instant recognition of what it is for.
The lack of variety in fonts and colours is a double-edged feature. On the negative side, pages can look downright boring, on the positive side, students spend less time mucking around with formatting and concentrate on the content. Embedding HTML elements has always gone smoothly for me, unlike once or twice when PBwiki did not like what I was trying to embed.
Google Sites: What can Google possibly have to this offer in this already mature field?
- Seamless integration of Google Apps
- A huge wealth of expertise in making things just work
- A nice interface
So far, in the limited time that I have been testing it out, the WYSIWYG editor has worked as advertised. Tables have behaved properly and uploading files has been a cinch. Embedding Youtube videos was, of course, effortless.
But then they have gone and done something weird. Google sites is only open to organisations signed up to Google apps. I can't just sign in with my Google ID. As an individual I can't make my own Google site, to organise a family reunion, say without buying a domain. You need a corporate or education domain so as a teacher I was able to set one up using my school email address and the domain of my school. Its odd but I guess they have their reasons. No doubt the news is out there and I just haven't read it yet.
An Oldie but a Goodie: xlmarks
I have been using xlmarks for a number of years because:
- It works
- It's simple
- It's small
- It easy to retrieve / mine student data
- Multiple class results are easily combined
- It does pretty much all I need it to
What is it?
As the name suggests it is an Excel template that can be used to track student results in a course or subject. It was developed by Efofex software who incidentally make great graphing and other mathematical / scientific software. Xlmarks is freeware, anyone can distribute it so long as they don't make any financial gain.
Read this doc on Scribd: XLMARKS
If you are a whiz with Excel and wish to customise it you can, Efofex will give you the password if you ask them nively. They do warn you, and rightly so, that the formulae used are pretty tricky. I hhave messed with it in the past and have had to start all over again due to unintended domino effects.
Download it from Efofex
Screencasting made easy: FreeScreencast
FreeScreencast is a free, integrated software + hosting solution that has recently come onto open beta that shows promise.
After registering you are prompted to make a small download and install the software. It is very quick. Using the software is simple, you have the option of recording full screen, a window or a user-defined region. When you hit record your screencast begins, when you stop you have the option of previewing, saving and/or uploading it straight away. There is a link to the website from the uploader and once there you can manage your screencasts; change the name, description, and tags.
Of course the gravy in all this is that you get to search other people's screencasts and use the now obligatory comment system. Embeddable, my new favourite unrecognised-by-some-spellcheckers word, is what these are; so of course I have included an embedded screencast below... on how to embed a screencast in Moodle.
Part of their getting started tagline reads: "No tech degree required" and it really is true. Its simple, clean and easy.
How you could use it in your teaching:
- Screencast yourself performing a process on an interactive whiteboard e.g. Solving an equation, drawing a diagram, highlighting verbs (your imagination is the limit here) and embed it in a wiki/social network/ Moodle etc for your students' revision or distance learning
- Illustrate how to use an application for fellow staff or for your students
Quizlet: Rote learning can be fun?
Quizlet is an excellent resource for those students trying to remember definitions, dates, conjugations, names, places, formulae….whatever
Put simply is a site where you input questions and answers and it then tests you on those answers after first familiarising you with them using 'guess and check' type strategies. It will keep hitting you with the things you get wrong until you get them right. It tests you in several different ways, type in the answer, multiple-choice and true or false. There is also an embeddable 'Scatter' activity which is my favourite.
Here is one that I whipped up with a measley 3 terms:
There are already many such quizzes that have been entered by other students and teachers. A look at the home page shows quizzes with titles like: French colours, The industrial revolution, Latin Vocabulary and Geometry Rocks. You can of course search for relevant quizzes
Possible ways to integrate it into your program:
- Individual learning: just alert the students to its existence
- Allocate groups to create quizzes on topics that you allocate or they nominate and try them out on other class members
- Language teachers: conjugate –er verbs in French. Pin yin to English for Chinese
- Students evaluate existing quizzes for accuracy and relevance to your topic
- Set up a glossary for the unit you are working on and have the students complete it and send a screenshot to you of their best scores
- The whole class contributes to a quiz on your thematic unit. Have each student add 2-3 terms.
- Make the construction of an accurate quiz part of an assessment task
- Next year, have the students do one of the above tasks and compare it to what your class did the year before. Students can evaluate their ideas as a comparison. Did they miss things? Did they think of something beyond the last class?
Comiqs: Create comics from photos and art
Engaging some students in literacy tasks can be difficult. Comic books have long been recognised as an effective way of getting students, particularly boys, to read. Now, a web 2.0 site in beta, Comiqs, provides a simple interface to create comics from any images that you fancy. You simply drag across the layout you would like for a page, upload and drag across photos and add speech and thought bubbles. Added functionality includes the option to access your Flikr account from within Comiqs.
Making your own comics is nothing revolutionary, you have always been able to make make comic strips using Word or PowerPoint (or pencil and paper!). However, Comiqs includes the functionality of comments, sharing and embeddability. Here is my lame attempt, created in five minutes from one of my own photos, it is only one page, but multiple pages are easy to set up:
It is not the only site that enables you to do so. I should also mention Comeeko, but a word of caution, some of the advertising is not suitable for children.
Educational applications:
- Junior science: Students could make a comic highlighting lab safety; create a
- biography of a scientist
- Primary/Secondary Literacy/English: Create short stories; develop characters for everyday objects; create biographies or autobiographies
- Art/Design: What layouts work; Colour combinations; Scan and upload work
- History: Biographies
- Languages: Dialogue
