Ah…summer. I’ve run into a couple of teachers in the last few days and all of them are in countdown mode. So weird not to be thinking about the calendar…
Anyway, here are three practical example pointers that might spur some thinking in the near or long term. Add some others if you have them.
1. Damian Bariexa is an English teacher at my old school, and yesterday he sent me this e-mail:
This semester, I implemented a wiki-based project in my Honors British Lit class for the first time; for the most part, my kids really enjoyed working on it. I’ve been trying to “promote” it as best I can by posting the link on other educational wiki sites, since the only way we show up in Google is via spelling errors (try Googling ‘poetry unappricated’ without quotes – we’re number 1!)… I’ve been monitoring traffic with Statcounter, and in the week or so it’s been up, we’ve already gotten hits from around the country and around the world. Even my seen-it-all, jaded seniors are intrigued by the idea that teachers in Argentina, Norway, and Australia are looking at their work as models for their own classes. It somehow even got included on what I think is an inservice wiki here.It’s at http://britishromanticism.wikispaces.com, and in addition to research and links, there’s also some blog-style discussion, as well as some stuff I wrote up for other teachers looking to incorporate wikis in their classes (I’m still tweaking it, but that’s the nature of wikis, I suppose – in a constant state of tweak).
It’s neither perfect nor final, but I definitely plan on utilizing some, of the basic structure and working this into my teaching next year, likely expanding it to other courses I’ll be teaching.
Call me late to the party, but this past year I’ve begun to see a lot of potential in wikis, and I feel like I’m only now beginning to realize that potential. I’ve also become quite a fan of TiddlyWiki, and have set up one such site for more administrative tasks (homework, downloads, links, etc.).
2. Then, this morning, I got this e-mail from Calvin Williamson pointing me to a blog where he’s making screencasts for his students at FIT/SUNY:
I am making Camtasia mathcasts using a tabletPC, posting them to blip.tv (a you-tube like video sharing site) and then giving them to my students in the form of a blog. Basically I have been using this technique to capture problem sessions I do with my students during office hours and posting them to the web…I really think this technique has great possibility for helping online math students see problem examples worked out.
3. Finally, Ben Wilkoff left a comment here last night and pointed to a really interesting wiki that lays out a plan for moving his school in a more progressive direction. Make sure you check out the proposal and the list of free software that he wants to use in place of the proprietary stuff.
Thanks for the shout here, Will – I’ve been getting a lot of traffic to the Romanticism wiki from your blog.
I wanted to put it out to the folks who are visiting that I’m a bit starved for discussion on this topic, and would love to hear from similarly-minded educators, either here in the comments or via e-mail, on how they are using or plan to use wikis in their teaching. Also, if anyone has any constructive criticism on my site, I’m game for that as well.
Finally, respect to Ben for his proposal for replacing proprietary software with free & open source stuff. I’ve often wondered how much it would save our district in licenses, etc., just to move everything over from XP and Office to a Linux/OpenOffice combo, let alone the other major software we use (don’t know how feasible that would be on the technical side, tho…).
Thanks for the mention Will. I am hoping this technique will be just the thing for math instructors who are looking for an easy way to deliver worked problems to their class (either online classes or face-to-face). My online students always say “If I could just see a few problems worked out…”. Now they can…
Hello, Will,
Some interesting resources available from this post, and kudos to the educators for breaking what is still new new ground —
Although Damian mentions lateness in “coming to the party” I don’t see that as an accurate characterization — any teacher using cutting edge/leading edge tools to improve the educational experience of their students is doing it right.
In reading over Ben’s list of resources, I was struck by the range of these resources. Depending on the specific learning activities, much of this functionality could be incorporated into a single well-designed Drupal site. This would then create a more coherent archive of student learning (and, for that matter, teacher planning and teacher learning) — this archive could then be incorporated into portfolio-based work, and used to improve/inform educational and technological approaches in future years.
Cheers,
Bill