Why use a Wiki?

In the third chapter of her book Stephanie presents the reader with information and examples as to why they should use a wiki and how they can be helpful in ones classroom.  She talks about how the way that we communicate with each other has changed and that we need to embrace this change and accept all the things that come with this change.  She also points out the inefficiency that can cripple some school systems because they don't have one uniform place where people can go to find information or to communicate with one another.  They included a chart in this chapter that kind of laid out the characteristics and structures of this system and how it could really be beneficial to people who decided to adapt the system of wikis.  It also gave examples in this chapter that showed how the uses of wikis helped to completely change a school systems forms of communication.  One of the most useful features that I noticed in this chapter is that it included a picture that showed the difference between using wikis and using email as a form of communication among people.  It just kind of reinforced the idea that when you are using email it is easy to leave people out of the loop and for different drafts of the same document to be floating around because certain people have only edited certain parts.  Where as when you use a wiki everyone has access to read and edit the same document when it is in one place and you don't have different versions floating around because one person edits it and then it is the same spot, you don't have to worry about someone only getting half of the message.  She also ends this chapter with some reflection questions to really help you think about how this chapter has helped shift your thinking on wikis.  I think the biggest thing that I got from the chapter is how much more efficient you can be when you are using a wiki, everything is in one online place that you don't have to worry about it getting lost on your computer or forgetting the paper that has all of your information.  The efficiency of it all is what really impressed me about the way they presented the wikis.

was there life before wikis?

The next few posts that I complete will come from the book Wikis for School Leaders by Stephanie Sandifer.  Hopefully through exploring this book I will learn how I can use wikis more effectively in a classroom setting and I can apply these skills to my future classroom.  The first chapter in her book just talks about life before wikis and kind of points out some of the ways that we used to organize and keep information that may seem a little outdated.  She basically wants educators to think about if they are really achieving in terms of "educating all people".  Is there a better way than how we used to do things?  What could be more useful than having binders of paper that you barely open and could spend hours looking through to find one specific paper?  The main intent of her message was to push people to openly embrace using the wikis and internet.  With all this talk of collaboration and sharing are we really doing just that or are we all talk and no action?  To have effective systems we have to be aware of the complexity that actually makes up these systems and just understand them more deeply.  With our learning about wikis and how they are set up and the way that school systems utilize them or don't utilize them we can come to appreciate them more deeply and may one day be able to use them in our own classroom.  So I guess for me I start this book hoping that I can understand this more complex system of how these internet hot spots work.  And hopefully by the end of this book I will have an idea of how I could execute this in my own classroom and maybe even help my future school system understand the value behind using wikis and other similar technologies in my own classroom.  This first chapter was really short and brief, but it did a good job building up my anticipation for what I will read in the rest of the book.

Sustaining your Wiki

The chapter I looked at today talked about how to sustain your wiki once you have created it for a class.  I think that this is a very practical thing to talk about especially for teachers because often times we can get that initial drive needed to create something online, but once it is time for us to actually go about managing it's upkeep it is a completely different story.  In this chapter the author also included a table and a rubric of sort that helps educators not only evaluate the level of their wiki, but also what it's use will be.  The author also includes different facts or indicators of various levels and it provides you with ideas of how to become better or gain more skills in the art of maintaining a wiki or broader your wikis use.  I think that this book would be a great resource for me to use as someone who enjoys the uses and ways technologies can be utilized in your classroom, but I am not the most technologically savvy person and I'm not one who will really go out and look for ways to become better at utilizing it.  I know that this book and rubric would be something very helpful in helping me become a more effective utilizer of the technologies that are available. 
It is clear to me that the author of this book took time to actually develop their ideas and that is a mark of someone who knows what they're talking about.  I think it is great that they have this resource available for teachers to use and it would be something that I would very highly recommend for people who want to become better at using wikis, but who may not necessarily have the time to do the research and dive deeper into the subject matter on their own time.

This was done from Ch.6 in the book Wikis for School Leaders by Stephanie D. Sandifer

Wikis

Today I read a chapter that talks about what wikis are and the two different types of wikis that can be used.  Wikis are websites that can be edited by a large number of people who do not need to know html code to edit them.  Some wikis are very popular and get a lot of traffic which is both a good and bad thing.  It's good to have a lot of traffic because you have a lot of people collaborating and you can even have experts add their information to the specific wiki so that everyone can benefit from it.  But at the same time you can also have people post false information on wikis just because they have the power and freedom to do such a thing. 
One type of wiki that people use is that of a public wiki. Public wikis would be websites such as wikipedia.  These wikis use crowd sourcing on a large and public scale for people to communicate with each other.  Public wikis are generally the ones that are more likely to have misinformation or misuse of the website occur on them.  The second type of wiki is that of an enterprise wiki.  These types of wikis are more restricted and have more of a management feature on them.  These have much more restrictions on access, control, and the number of people who are allowed to participate on them. 
As far as being able to use wikis in the classroom I think that they could be great tools to teach about how easy it is to find false information on a wikisite and on the web in general especially with older elementary school students.  You also have the chance to use this tool inside of you classroom to help show the collaborative process and allow for people to see the process you went through to get to a decision.  If you are not sure of the use of wikis you can find almost all of the features that you have on wikis available through googledocs or other google features.  Don't limit your creativity as a teacher, because your creativity will be a spring board for your students.

*All of this information is a reflection to chapter 2 in the book Wikis for School Leaders by Stephanie D. Sandifer

Leaving Good Blog Comments

I read a chapter from the book Teaching the iGeneration and I focused in on the section that was about leaving good blog comments.  This talked about the features of good blogs one of those features being an interactive blog.  It is important that you use the internet to not only communicate with others, but also to accept their feedback.  This chapter also talked about how to gather the appropriate information needed to leave a good quality blog comment.  You must have facts, make connections, ask questions, and give opinions.  Having all of these features will allow you to craft an acceptable and good use blog comment.  I think that the two charts that this book provides you with how to gather your thoughts and then how to craft your comments would be helpful to providing your students with a good rubric and good guideline for not only responding to blogs, but it would also help them think about how to create effective and useful blogs that are easy for others to interactive and respond with.  This would be a great thing to go over in an upper elementary school classroom as well as middle and high school classrooms.  It would be an easy and effective way to have your students discuss important issues and then allow for other opinions and viewpoints to be raised that would cause them to think more about the issues at hand.  I found this small section of this book very helpful and I am sure that there are more effective and useful tools that you could find inside of this book that would help you to reach your students in a more efficient and effective way.

Using Online Portfolios to Publish Student Work

Today I looked in the book about teaching with Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts, and More.  It is about how these online features can help extend student learning.  In chapter 8 this author talks specifically about the use of E-portfolios.  This is similar to when we created our portfolios for our Senior year of undergraduate work that encompassed all of our work we had completed on the program in the 4 previous years.  It was our way of showing that we had completed the necessary requirements to graduate and that we had a firm grip on the skills we had been taught over the past four years.  It was a summative assessment and a collection of all the work that we thought was our best quality and everything that we could collect to show mastery.  There are two types of online portfolios that you can use in your classroom.  The first of which is called a working portfolio this type of portfolio is used for the student to add work as it is completed and also reflect back on work that they have completed.  They can also use a presentation portfolio which is used to show an audience and showcase ones work, it has less of a reflective element and more of a showcasing component.  This chapter just made me think about how you can use portfolios for more than just art class, it will allow you to stretch your children and push them.  Online portfolios are good because they make sure that you have integrated technology at earlier times in your classroom so that you have the appropriate material necessary to add into your portfolios.  These allow your students to have a structured creativity that will let them showcase portions of their best work and allow them to feel pride in what they have done.

The Writing is on the Screen: Social Networking is Here to Stay

The title of this blog post is the title of the chapter that I recently read from a book titled The Socially Networked Classroom.  This chapter dealt with bringing up questions and ideas that you may face in your classroom in terms of how social networking will play into your instruction.  The author states in the first chapter that he believes this book would be best utilized by teachers who are dealing with 5 graders all the way through adults.  This idea just plays on the fact that sometimes there is an age where it can be too dangerous or risky to have children involved with all that comes along with being a part of a social network.  Teachers should not be afraid of using social networks in their classrooms and as a way to have the children engaged and to help them learn, but it is also important to make sure that you use discretion and you don't expose children to something that powerful and far reaching before they are ready for it.  The author says that they will use real life examples to help explain the application to various classrooms.  I think that will make it less likely to see over-whelming to teachers who may not be familiar with how to make things fit the context of their own classroom.  In terms of using this technology in my own classroom I'm not sure how much I would be able to integrate social networking in the younger grades, but it doesn't mean that sometime in the next five years it won't be relevant.  The biggest concern with introducing this technology to your students is that you don't want them to lose to much of that innocence at a young age, how do you keep them young without keeping them sheltered?  I guess it will be a game of balance and just realizing that social networking is going to be around so you shouldn't try and fight it and run away from it, but rather show students how it can be more than just a communication tool, but also that it can be a valuable learning tool. 

Technology Director

Today we had Adam Hotchkiss who is the Technical Director at the Christian Academy of Knoxville.  He gave an overview of his responsibilities in new technology and how he has had a role in transforming  how the technology works in that school.  The leadership is crucial in planing for the long term use of your technology that you have decided to integrate into your school.  He also touched on the vision that you need to have as a technology coordinator and director and how will this technology impact your students down the road and also how does your vision compare to the school's mission.  Technology is more like the tool that supports education it is not an end all or a saving grace for the educational system.  You need to have a critical eye and an open mind when you are looking at new technology and how you can best serve the population of your school.  Being aware of the technology is important during this process, but you also have to be open to new and different resources.  Budgeting is a difficult process when you are in the role of the technology director because technology changes so quickly, prices fluctuate, and school budgets are tight.  You also need to be sure you remember the little things add up so be sure to set aside funds for the infrastructure and things that go into supporting the technology which you are buying as well as having alternatives funds to test out new technologies that are coming about.  After you have gotten the technology in place have a plan of how you want to educate your staff on how it works.  One idea is to have the teachers come in for an initial class and training and then you allow them to work with it for a few weeks before having them come back in for a question and answer system as well as going in a little more depth on the product.  I think the biggest thing that I gained from his presentation is the idea that with technology integration in the schools you need to keep in mind you can't change the whole technological framework of your schools in one swoop.  It is a constant reworking and integration of new technologies and resources so you have to be able to have a keen eye open for what would work and just be critical and real about how the technologies will actually be used in your schools.  I appreciated his viewpoint and what he had to say on his role at this school.

The Role of a Technology Coordinator

Today we listend to a talk by Polly Brake who is the Technology Coordinator at Grace Christian Academy.  She talked about not only how she came to be in this position, but also some of the challenges that she has faced since starting there.  I think that one of the most challenging issues that you will find when you are in this role is that of getting people to be as excited about technology as you are.  Teachers have a million things on their plates and even though technology can help ease the amount of work they have to do, it can be initially overwhelming to try and put one more thing on their plate.  So your biggest challenge is to help teachers see the opportunities and how things will just fall into place if they are disciplined at first and take a little bit of time to try and learn the new technologies.  Also I think you could take from her talk the importance of having one unified type of technology throughout the school it makes it easier for you as the technology coordinator to help them, but it also allows for teachers to help one another learn how to better navigate and figure out the technology together.  She just kept showing how important it is for you to be proactive and to stay positive even when you don't get a very good initial response from your teachers.  You have to be persistent and try different things, work closely with those who are on board with you and don't get discouraged.  This may be a role that puts you in charge of a lot of different aspects in terms of technology, but you just have to face each challenge with a can do attitude and be ready for what each day holds.

Tracking US Trends in Technology Use

Today I read an article that is related to chapter 4 of the Williamson text.  This article specifically tracked the trends of how technology is used across the United States.  It focused a lot of the disconnect among states and the fact that many states don't measure up to parameters set before them.  A majority of the 50 states failed to meet the expectations placed in front of them and there are very few that meet the expectations in an exceptional manner.  That being said states are trying to improve and work on using the technology to the best of their abilities, but it takes a lot of work.  There are already a million different things that teachers need to fit into a single day and a single lesson and to expect them to get a grip on new technologies is a lot of initial work, yes it pays off, but it is a lot on the teacher at the beginning.  That is why having people who are technology specialists is important it is nice to have those people who can walk teachers through what they need to be doing and ways to improve their classroom instruction through the use of technology.  States are trying to improve on their low scores and improve education, but it is not as easy as it may seem.  Besides having funding for the equipment needed they must also have skilled and trained professionals who can proficiently and effectively use the technology at their hand.  This article mainly focused on how states are trying to improve and some steps that may help them in this process.

Students Use of the Internet

I recently read another chapter from Aimee M. Bissonette's book Cyber Law: Maximizing Safety and Minimizing Risk in Classrooms.  This chapter talked about how students use the internet and it focused a lot on the ways that schools can be implicated in a students negative use of the internet and technology.  One of the issues that was talked about a lot during this chapter was the right of free speech.  Free Speech is one of those issues that easier for the schools to combat when something happens on school grounds, but outside of school grounds it seems like a loophole for people to not be held accountable for their actions.  Even in the past 30 years technology has drastically shifted and a lot of our communication is done in a non-verbal manner and that can be just as disruptive, if not even more, to the students in the classroom and to the people who are affected by the things that are posted and said over the internet.
One way for schools to protect themselves from issues such as this is by creating a policy that provides coverage for incidents or that limits the access which students have to various social medias.  But how is a school supposed to be responsible for actions that happen off-campus?  If a student posts something while off of school grounds that is disruptive to the learning process then they can still be dealt with in the same fashion, but it is harder to control.  I think more than what the schools can control it is also just as much the responsibility of the parents to make sure that their students are appropriately using the technology that they have been given and that they don't abuse the freedom that comes with internet access.  Schools have a big job and it is hard for them to do everything without outside support.

Cyber Law: Cyberbullying

I just read the first chapter of Aimee Bissonette's book Cyber Law: Maximizing Safety and Minimizing Risk in Classrooms.  This first chapter focused specifically on cyberbullying and how schools should respond and get involved in fixing this problem.  I found this chapter very interesting and I really enjoyed it.  I think one of the things that caught me most off guard is that fact that the school's often get put in a hard position.  They walk this fine line between being responsible to respond to the situation, but they have to be careful to not overstep their boundaries and their role.  Not overstepping someone's right to free speech is something that they need to be very cautious of.  The book says the best way for a school to avoid being put in this sticky situation is to create a cyberbullying policy, specifically one that is very clear in it's expectations and specific in the consequences.  Policies of these sorts are a great defense mechanism for schools so that they don't get caught off guard and so students know that they aren't alone if they are the one being bullied.

There was one part in this chapter that I thought summed everything up well.  On page 11 the author says, "policy alone does not teach students to think about the impact of their actions; nor does it engage them in dialogue about how they can address the challenges that new technologies bring, in an informed, thoughtful and coherent manner.  Schools need to supplement cyberbullying policies with educational efforts."  This just helps to remind you that having a rule will not fix the problem, but rather teaching students actions have consequences and that we are all human is what will make a difference in combating this issue.