Wikis (What I Know Is.....)

This "Wikis in Plain English" is a great introduction to what exactly wikis are for those of us who have limited knowledge. Before I began my research into wikis, I had heard very little about them. I wondered why I would want strangers to edit my work and what would happen to the original copy. The very idea of it kind of freaked me out. I wondered how wikis could be relevant to me as an early years French immersion teacher and in my personal life.

Reflections on Learning About the Tool

As I began to read about wikis, I was encouraged to learn that the word "wiki-wiki" is Hawaiian for “quick” or “fast”. The first wiki was developed by a man who was looking to create a quick and easy authoring tool. I thought, “Great! Here’s a tool that will hopefully be quicker to learn and use than podcasting was!” I followed some of the Trailfires listed for this tool. Here I learned that I could add text, audio, photos, videos and links to a wiki. Who knew?!

In Teachers First Wiki Walk Through I found more in-depth information on wikis and how to use them. Wikis are compared to blogs with the explanation that blogs are good for individual opinion whereas wikis "trump individual opinion with group concerns" (Richardson, 2009).

Rachel Boyd's "The Wiki Way" is another great resource which outlines ways of creating and facilitating an online learning environment using wikis.

Wikipedia is the wiki that most people are familiar with. I'd heard about Wikipedia before I started this course and had used it previously without knowing that it was a wiki, something that I or anyone else could contribute to. In reading about Wikipedia I learned that it has strict guidelines about its content. Contributors are asked to write in a "neutral" or unbiased way and content must be verifiable. (Richardson, 2009) suggests that it’s a good starting point for work, but not to be used as the sole resource. He recommends that teachers check it for accuracy.

I signed up to Wikispaces for Educators and got my free registration as an educator. Here is a link to my wiki page. I pondered what I wanted to write about in my wiki. I've been searching for math game websites this weekend for a presentation my committee is giving to our staff next week on using Math Games for student learning conferences. It quickly became clear to me that developing a wiki of links to Math Games for the staff to use and add to would be a good way of killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. I’d been saving math game websites in Delicious, so I began to transfer them over to my wiki. I intend to add a brief review of each site this week to let other teachers know what I found useful.

I did a search in Wikispaces on "French" and was delighted to discover that I can change the language to French (and other languages) by changing my settings! I then did a search on "ecriture" (writing) and found a wiki with some French websites dedicated to French writing in the primary grades. One of them is called "Ecriture pour le deuxieme cycle" and it lists some French website links with a brief description of them.


Discussion in Terms of Personal Learning

I began to look for wikis that would be useful in my personal life. I plan on travelling during my leave from teaching, so Will Richardson's suggestion of finding vacation bargains at Wikitravel.org peaked my interest. A search on Costa Rica brought me a wealth of information on everything from best tourist destinations to tips on getting around the country. I could even add more information to the site after my trip!

At Recipe Wikis there is a large variety of recipes that anyone can edit and add to. I like the idea of trying the recipes that have been tested and improved by others, and editing them myself according to modifications I made. It would also be fun to start a recipe wiki at work or with family and friends where we could share our favourite recipes.


Discussion in Terms of Professional Learning

PROS

Professional Development Educators can use wikis to conduct or follow up after professional development workshops. The Assessment Committee at our school met last week to plan our PD session for the upcoming retreat. We were wondering what methods other teachers were using during student learning conferences and who would be willing to share at the session. I suggested sending out an email to the staff with regards to this question. Knowing what I know now, a better idea would be to use a Student Learning wiki. It could be used collaboratively by the staff to see what others are doing and to share ideas. The Student Learning wiki could be used after the PD session as well, for teachers to continue to add new ideas on communicating student learning. The only problem I foresee in using wikis is that many of the staff would need to be taught how to use them. A simple way to do this may be to provide them with my blog address so they could read about wikis and follow the links I provide there. I kept that audience in mind as I wrote this blog post. Our Assessment Committee could also set up a wiki to continue our planning without having to actually meet in person.

Follows the Inquiry Model of Collaborative Learning

Wikis can help students become better learners because namely collaboration and negotiation skills are developed (Richardson, 2009). It’s a democratic process of knowledge creation. Students not only learn to publish content, they learn to collaborate and negotiate with others about the content of wikis. A class wiki on researching communities of the world or ancient civilizations would lend itself well to the children working collaboratively together.

Resource Sites

Teachers can collaboratively build resource sites for their classes. In preparation for the our PD session on communicating student learning, I will be sharing with staff math games that students can play with their parents during their conferences. I have begun to compile a list of good math game website links for this purpose. I will be writing a short review of each site and good math games I found within it. I will make the site public so that other teachers from my school (or others) can add to the site over the school year.

Opportunity for Student Writing
In the Nelson Central School Wiki, most of the links on this page are to blogs, but one link is to "Tall Stories" where students each contribute a line to a collaborative story and sign their initials beside it. This would be a fun way to create some wacky stories together as a class. Students could also write book reports and collaborative research in a wiki.

Simple.wikipedia.org
This website is written in simple English – good for ESL learners and children. It can also be translated into many other languages.

Wikijunior
At http://www.wikijunior.com/, books are being written collaboratively with children and adults on a variety of topics. They’re well organized, easy to read and have great illustrations. The booklet on Ancient Civilizations/Egyptians would be a good resource for Grade 3 Social Studies. Unfortunately, I can't get the pages in French, but will continue to explore ways to translate them on line. I was able to find Wikipedia in French, but it is not at the appropriate reading level for elementary students.

CONS

Difficulty Assessing Quality of Work

Wikis play havoc with traditional ideas of copyright and intellectual property (Richardson, 2009). In Wikipedia, for example, it can be difficult to reference the authors. Many readers find Wikipedia difficult to trust because it is often difficult to reference specific authors, making the quality of the work difficult to assess. It is also "not clear how to identify the date of publication, since the text itself is in a constant state of flux" (Davies, Merchant, 2009). It is possible to check the credentials of authors by clicking to contributors' profiles and following links to other sites they have contributed to. As Richardson says, "knowing what sources to trust is becoming a much more labor-intensive exercise (Richardson, 2009) . Davies and Merchant suggest that the way in which wikis are multi-authored can cause one to be suspect of all authors and Wikis "may help us realise the need to read all texts critically"(Davies, Merchant, 2009). We need to read all text sources (including books) with a critical eye and use a variety of sources to assess knowledge.

Vandalism
Wikipedia is frequently vandalised. People will change text and make it incorrect, move pages by changing links and connect words to inappropriate content or images. For this reason, teachers need to review Wikipedia content before sharing it with students. Davies and Merchant suggest that teaching students to be responsible citizens must be extended to include online "netiquette" as well.

CONCLUSION

I began my exploration of wikis with a somewhat negative attitude about them, but am happy to have discovered their relevance to both my personal and professional lives. Using a password protected wiki in Wikispaces would be an ideal environment for my students and I to explore wikis further. I especially like the collaborative nature of wikis and their application in an Inquiry-Based Learning model.

REFERENCES
Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Davies, J., and Merchant, G. (2009) Web 2.0 for Schools. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.

Mini-me

Podcasting For Dummies

Introduction

Podcasting is a relatively new concept for me. My first experience with it was Joanne’s introductory lecture at the beginning of the course. I later discovered an interesting series of podcasts about step-parenting that I found very informative. I could already see how podcasting applied to my personal life, but wondered how I would use it as an elementary school teacher. I felt somewhat overloaded with the prospect of even more information to take in and how would I find the time to listen to it all? I quickly began to explore how to download podcasts onto my MP3 player so that I could listen while at the gym. Here is an account of my research:

Reflections on the Process of Learning About the Tool

I began my exploration of podcasting with the suggested resources in Trailfires. I soon realized that I would need iTunes downloaded onto my laptop. This took what seemed like forever because I didn’t have much ram. After the download I ran out to get some more installed. Navigating through iTunes and everywhere else was much faster after this.

I spent some time getting familiar with the iTunes site. My previous experience with music software was with Sonic Stage, the program that came with my Sony MP3 player. I found many interesting podcasts and got excited about downloading some of them onto my Sony MP3 player. I turned to eHow to figure out how to do this and followed the fairly simple instructions. I managed to transfer a podcast into Sonic Stage and then onto my MP3 player, but it couldn’t play the file. I decided my 4 year-old MP3 player was too old, so I went out in search of a new one. There was so much to choose from that I couldn’t decide, so I will look at consumer reports before buying one.

My next goal was to make a podcast of my weekly Dictee words to embed on my classroom blog. I Googled to figure out how to do this and found the instructions on the Slideshare website. First of all I downloaded Audacity and with a bit of help from Terry was able to record my voice and save the file. The on-line instructions that I found said to download Lame to export my file as an MP3 file. We didn’t have any luck with this.

I turned to Will Richardson's book once again for help with creating podcasts and discovered a website called Podomatic.com. He recommends it for people like me who are having difficulty with Audacity and converting to MP3 files. It was very easy to use and I was able to record my weekly Dictee and get it posted to my blog. It's on my sidebar at the top. I wasn't very comfortable giving them my blog's username and password, but had to in order to get the audio file embedded.

Discussion of Tool in Terms of Personal/Social Implications

I was amazed to see all of the foreign language podcasts and thought this would be a great way to improve my French and learn Spanish. Here’s a link to a podcast on Spanish lessons that I hope to use on my new MP3 player when I get it.

The other categories that interested me were Comedy, Meditation and Oprah’s Spirit Channel. Once I get my new MP3 player, I will enjoy listening to podcasts at the gym and when traveling. Terry and I enjoyed listening to the CBC’s “Vinyl Café” last Sunday. It made me think of the days when people didn’t have television, and families would gather around the radio to listen to a favourite show. I'll look for other podcasts for us to listen to together.

As for creating podcasts, I think it would be a neat idea to create a personal blog to share with family and friends where I could embed recordings of events that are happening in our lives. I wonder if I could embed audio files into Flickr to narrate the pictures in my gallery? That would be pretty amazing!

Discussion in Terms of Professional Learning

English Language Instruction

I found a number of podcasts that could be used in E.L.A. One of them was “Hooked On Phonics” which is a video podcast. I think it would be great remedial work for a boy in my room who is very weak in English reading. The various EAL podcasts would be helpful to immigrant children in our schools for whom English is not their first language.

Kathy Ishizka at http://www.grandviewlibrary.org/ has podcasts of picture books for kids to listen to with related questions that parents can ask at home to help with comprehesion. Her goal is to get more parents involved with their children's learning. There is also a CD of each podcast so that kids can read along. I can definitely see the value of this in my classroom. My school library doesn't have any French story books with CDs, so now I can easily make my own for kids to use at school and at home!

Professional Development

Esther Kreider Eash writes about podcasting as a “cost-effective method of providing professional development to teachers.” Content is created once and is always accessible for review at any place and at any time. The University of South Florida has a series of podcasts called "Tech-Ease: Classroom Tech Help". It's a series of tutorial movies on the latest technologies for educators. See their podcast about podcasting.

Fosters Multi-Skill Development

Students learn a wide range of skills when creating podcasts. These include research and writing skills, developing vocabulary, and learning to speak effectively. They “develop advanced teamwork and communication skills”.(Schmit, 2007) They must learn to organize facts into logical sequences to help the audience see the big picture. Student podcasts can include interviews, dramatizations of their creative writing, readings of book passages to demonstrate skills. An end product of student research can be a paper, poster, or even a podcast. (Kreider Eash, 2006) There are so many ways of communicating student learning.

Convenient

Podcasting is a convenient medium to use. We choose what we want to hear, when we want to hear it; there’s no need to wait for our favourite show. Podcasts are portable on an MP3 player and can be listened to anywhere and at any time. In fact, subscribing to a syndicated podcast automatically downloads updates onto your computer or MP3 player.

Foreign Language Instruction

Many foreign language instructors have adopted this medium. There are many language-learning podcasts available to students “to enhance their learning of vocabulary, authentic pronunciation, and cultural information.” (Schmit,2007) I am still looking for podcasts in French that are suitable for children. Maybe I'll have to create my own.

Motivating for Students

Many educators don't see the educational value of using and creating podcasts yet, but they do see how it would be motivating to students. As J. Hauser says in M. Stephens' article, "you create something using technology, you produce it and publish it and get that gratification from presenting it to an audience of listeners." When students have a purpose and audience for their work, they put more effort into it and with creating podcasts, they are learning technology skills.

CONS

Explicit Content

Unlike radio or television stations, podcasts are not governed by FCC rules, so there are no criteria when it comes to language or content. iTunes provides parental controls that allows them to filter out podcasts containing the “explicit” label.

Time Consuming

Will Richardson says (about podcasting) that "you do need a lot of technical expertise to make it work." This has not been my experience. Learning how to use the technology and tools takes time and patience and you need to have the right equipment. Hauser does workshops with educators on how to create podcasts. She says, "We always tell them that this is the hardest part - learning how to use the technology and the tools for the first time - and that it gets much easier when they try it on their own and try it a few times." She's got that right!

Copyright

This newly emerging media challenges existing copyright and intellectual property laws. M. Stephens suggests that educators and students make their own music tracks in Garageband or other music programs and use public domain music in creativecommons.org. Freeplay.com may be another source, he says, if the purpose is educational.

Conclusions

I've learned a lot about podcasting over the past week and have found some good classroom applications for this tool. I will continue to post weekly Dictee words to my classroom blog through Podomatic.com and will begin making CDs of French stories with Audacity for my students to read along with. Once I get my new MP3 player, I'll begin Spanish lessons, listen to my favourite comedy podcasts and meditate when I get overwhelmed with information overload!

References

Kreider Eash, E. (2006, April). Podcasting 101. Computers in Libraries. 17-20.

Schmit, D. (2007, Jan/Feb). Creating a Broadcasting Empire...From the Corner of Your Classroom!. Multimedia & Internet@Schools. 14(1), 13-16.

Stephens, M. (2007, Feb). All About Podcasting. Library Media Connection. 54-57.

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.

Social Bookmarking

Introduction

Before I discovered Social Bookmarking, I had been saving websites to my favourites menu. The list had gotten extremely long and there was no organization to it as I hadn't yet explored the use of folders. I began saving websites related to Web 2.0 into my blog shortly after I started this course so I could refer to them easily later on. I am still using the drop-down menu of my Explorer bookmarks for quick access to the sites I use most often and this has been working well for me. At school, my students have been saving websites to their favourites; I haven't yet introduced folders to them.

The problem before my investigation of social bookmarking was that I could only access my favourites on my home computer unless I put them into favourites at school as well. I would often email myself websites to store in my favourites at school. Social bookmarking has simplified my life! I've discovered a way to access websites on any computer that has Internet access and I've learned how to organize them for easy retrieval. Here's an account of my experiences over the past week with Social Bookmarking:

REFLECTIONS ON THE PROCESS OF LEARNING ABOUT THE TOOL

I began by reviewing several of the Trail Fires provided to get a general idea of what Social Bookmarking was all about. As with all Web 2.0 tools, the real learning comes from actually using the tool, so I quickly registered with Delicious and began playing around with it. I was excited to learn that my bookmarks would be available on any computer with Internet access. When Delicious automatically transferred everything from my Favourites into the site without my approval, I was a little unnerved. I thought that everyone would be able to see all of my bookmarks, including the more personal ones. I quickly began deleting those of a more personal nature. Afterwards I discovered that by editing a bookmark I can choose to share it or keep it private. If I'm logged out I can't see my private bookmarks either.

In Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts, Richardson writes about getting tagging ideas from others. In a search for bookmarks on "International Volunteering", I discovered that others had tagged such sites with "Volunteer_abroad". I followed suit and was able to find lots of good bookmarked sites on this topic. In fact, I can apply many tags to a link so I can get connected to even more information more easily.

It took me a while to discover the Delicious buttons in my tool bar, but once I did, I began using the Bookmarks button to quickly view what I had in my folders and begin tagging websites.

I spent some time with Diigo.com as well. First of all I noticed that it takes a long time to download, due to all the graphics I suppose. The video tutorial is a great introduction to the site. I downloaded the Diigolet into my tool bar with some difficulty, I might add. The hiliter didn't work for me at first, but did later on once I had left the site for a while.

A search on "Math" in "Community" gave me Groups who were interested in Math that I might want to follow. It also gave me "Related Lists", for ex. "Math Resources" and with a click on "Webslides", I could view math websites as a slide show. A quick view of the first page of the website often tells you if it's worth investigating further. A distinguishing feature of Diigo is that it saves a copy of the entire page into your account, so if that resource disappears later, you still have access to it. You can't do this with Delicious.

DISCUSSION IN TERMS OF PERSONAL LEARNING

On Saturday, Terry and I were thinking we would have a family movie night. I suggested we use Delicious to find bookmarked sites about good family movies. The great thing about this site is that most of the bookmarks are good enough that people added them. We managed to find some sites pretty quickly that listed DVDs according to age group and genre and that had reviews. "Homeward Bound - The Incredible Journey" seemed like a good option, so we went in search of it at our local video store. It was there, but we ended up with "Hannah Montana - the Movie", a new release; we'll save the other DVD for another weekend. My bookmarked sites on Family Movies can be shared with my friends and their families as well.

I've also searched the site for bookmarks on Volunteering Abroad, as I am interested in travelling during my leave in January and am exploring my options. It didn't take long to find a number of relevant sites. Working with lion cubs in South Africa sounds pretty cool! I can see myself using the site often to find bookmarks on subjects of personal interest. It really helps narrow down the search for good websites on a particular subject.

Richardson mentions librarything.com, an online catalog of all of the books in my own personal library. It lets you add notes, descriptions and tags that describe what they're about and is a way of connecting with all of the other people in the community who have tagged a book. He suggests that it is a good way to get ideas about what to read next. It sounds like a virtual reading club to me, great for people who don't have access to or time for the real thing.

Delicious and Diigo would also provide a way of making social connections with other people who are interested in the same things as me.

DISCUSSION IN TERMS OF PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

PROS

1. Good Source of Bookmarked Websites

I can find good peer-suggested websites, podcasts, wikis, blogs, articles and images without doing all the research, and others can benefit from good sites I have found also. I can access these sites on any computer with Internet access. As Richardson says, "If I find something interesting enough to save, odds are good that you will, too." I can put together a list of bookmarks on a unit we're studying and put them into my classroom blog for kids to access without going into the bookmarking site.

2. Offers Differing Perspectives on Resources and How to Find Them

"It may become less important to know and remember where information was found and more important to know how to retrieve it using an organization scheme created with peers and colleagues." (Educause Learning Initiative). It's the tags we give to bookmarked sites that will enable others to find them easily, so we need some consistency to how we tag them. This "homegrown taxonomy for the Web" or "folksonomy" gives differing perspectives on information and resources because people tag things in different ways. We are building deeper understanding when we classify information in our own ways, rather than by a taxonomy dictated by others for us to follow. It's a move from rote learning to process learning and the latter requires deeper levels of thinking.

3. Collaborative Learning

Social bookmarking sites foster collaborative learning amongst students. Pam Berger (2007) writes about a teacher, Mr. Hutch, who uses social bookmarking with his students for research projects. The teacher "believes his students need to be scientists, to follow an inquiry framework, work collaboratively to solve problems and create new understandings". He puts a "high priority on collaboration strategies, critical thinking.... and using new Web 2.0 tools to keep students motivated and involved in their learning". I can definitely see how older students would be excited about using a site like Delicious; here is yet another opportunity for them to socialize!

Richardson suggests collaborative groups or classrooms use a unique tag that everyone can use when they bookmark something of interest. In this way, they can build a classroom resource. I couldn't do this with my Grade 3s, but it would certainly be a useful tool with older kids.

DesRoches suggests teachers and students use the tool to tag interesting reviews to recommend books and DVDs for the library. She also emphasizes that research is more collaborative and students are more careful about evaluating resources when their peers may be using them.

CONS

1. Not Suitable For Children

There are links to some pretty risque websites on both Diigo and Delicious, so kids shouldn't be on these sites unless strictly supervised.

2. Done By Amateurs

There is nobody monitoring how resources are organized and tagged on these sites. This can lead to inconsistent or otherwise poor use of tags, making it difficult to find the bookmarks we're looking for. For example, if someone saves a bookmark for a site about Persian cats, but only tags the site with the term "Persian_cats", that resource may never be found by someone looking for information on breeds of cats. (See Educause Learning Initiative)

3. Confusing

I tried doing a tag search in Delicious on "Ancient Egypt" to find someone with a good collection of them as I wanted to subscribe to an RSS feed to be updated on their research. After a bit of time and effort, I wasn't able to find anyone with such a collection of bookmarks. Also, when I add RSS Feeds in Delicious, I thought they would appear in my subscription in Google Reader, but they do not. I'll need to take some more time to figure these things out.


CONCLUSIONS

Of the two social bookmarking websites I explored, Diigo has a much better introduction to social bookmarking with its video tutorials than does Delicious. Its richer set of browser tools allow the reader to hilight passages and attach "sticky notes" with comments on Web pages, making it more suitable for academic research. Delicious, on the other hand, seems to be more "social" in nature. I'll probably use Diigo for our PD session on Assessment by providing colleagues with a list of good resources to refer to, and invite them to add to the list. I hope that they will be as excited as I about exploring a tool that can make our lives and jobs easier.

References

Berger, P. Social Bookmarking: Locate, Tag and Collaborate. Information Searcher v.17 no. 3 (2007) p. 1, 3-5.

Funny Math Video