Whose Blog/Wiki Is It Anyway?
Posted by Paul Allison on May 30th, 2006
Join us at the Webcast Academy (and Skype SusanEttenheim) Wednesday, May 31, 2006 at 9:00 pm EST for a discussion of these questions:
When setting up group blogs or wikis in schools, one of the first set of questions has to do with the focus of the blog or wiki.
- Is the site about the content of a particular course which a new group of students joins each semester?
- Or is the blog/wiki for the particular group of students in a class, and therefore it closes at the end of a class?
Other questions quickly follow:
- Is the blog/wiki going to be public or private? Will readers be limited to those who we register or will registration be open? Who will have permission to write responses or new posts to the blog/wiki? Will there be a review process before something gets posted?
- Would it be best if we could give students their own blogs/wikis, and aggregrate these into one class-wide or school-wide blog?
- Or is there something more useful about having a group class-wide blog/wiki? How can we set up blogs/wikis that have multiple classes and schools using them, yet make it possible for individual students and classes to see their work separately?
By now some of us have tried any number of these possibilities. Let’s get together and talk about what has gone well and what hasn’t in designing blogs and wikis for our classrooms and schools. Let’s tell our stories with an eye to the future of what we might do next year.
June 1st, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Enjoyed the webcast last night. With all the knowledgeable voices there, I was happy to just listen. In addition, I wasn’t really sure how to join the skypecast but will get that later. To continue the discussion, though, I just have a few thoughts I want to chime in with.
Thanks to a number of people sharing their experience and thoughts, I am more and more clearly seeing the need for a separate technology class within a school. Could have many different relations to the regular content classes but value of it as a sandbox for students to explore in seems invaluable. Without it, seems very difficult for teachers to take advantage of tools people are exploring here. I think that is the case of everyone involved in the discussion (or is there anyone who is in a traditional content class – if so, please share positives, negatives). Becomes a place in the day where students can experiment and socialize and maybe process and application become more important than content.As is at my school, I provide support for classes without own tech class - mainly provide tools but not much time/chance for students to play.
Community of communities – would love to think of my students work as a resource for other students in other schools. Do I need to know whether so or which school. Can it work in traditional content classes as well as tech classes?
For example, we have at our school a requirement called New York Experience, where student go out every Friday afternoon to explore a part of New York city. They build these trips into a portfolio that is one of their grad requirements. One idea would be to put their work up on the high school wiki or a blog where others could respond to their descriptions or others from another city could do shared parallel descriptions of their own hometown. Could be very beneficial for students to see their work as a public resource for others and to have others help them built it out. I guess what I’m getting to is how would I go about following up on this – integrating or sharing our community with others – just put it out there and see what evolves or figure out a way to set it up with other particular schools in advance?
Another example of what we would like to build on, one english teacher started a blog, she and students enjoyed it but we weren’t really sure where to go from where we started. How could the students in that class see where and what others are writing about James Baldwin, for example, and how could their reflections be available for others in a systematic way. Could some essential questions be the focus of yet a different blog?
Anyway I think I’ll end here, just want to try mixing some text in as extension of webcast and hopefully tease out even more useful thinking from you all. thanks again.
June 27th, 2006 at 9:32 am
Hello,
My name is Tara Boone and I am very interested in the use of wiki’s in the elementary setting. I have been researching on-line to find anyone or anybody who is or has used this medium in the classroom. I have taught for nine years and during that time I was a Technology Facilitator and I touched on the use of wiki’s a little. I recently attended a conference in MN where I saw a demo on an amazing product by MindTouch. I am currently starting my own consulting business, Frog Learning Consultants, because I believe that this program will fit easily into a school setting - the entire school setting. I have been given access by the company to create a virtual school to use as a demo in sharing this tool with other schools/teachers/etc. My virtual school shows how it can be used for committee groups, student pages, etc. All of this creates an effective environment for collaborating, sharing ideas, and it is integrating technology into the curriculum. It is like no other wiki you have ever seen b/c of the features that are in place. I would really like to show anyone who is interested in the use of wiki’s in the school setting the demo of the virtual school because I would like feedback, help in getting this tool known, etc.
I can be reached at tarab@froglc.com