More on Wikis

I find that wikis are very convenient as a place to store things (pictures, video, lesson plans, PowerPoint projects, etc.) In addition to my library wiki, I also maintain a wiki for the school called the DSMS Best Practices wiki http://dsmsbestpractices.pbworks.com/. This is where I keep the library and laptop calendars. While some teachers use this wiki, it is definitely under-utilized. Next year, I would like to work on increasing the publicity for this wiki so that teachers will see the value and will use it to collaborate and share with their grade level departments and teams.

This year, I decided to put my end-of-the-year report on the wiki http://dsmsbestpractices.pbworks.com/Library+End-of-Year+Report. I used our new evaluation tool as the format for my report and added some statistics. Advantages of this format are that everything is in one spot and I was able to include examples. Next year, I would like to start this page at the beginning of the year and just add the projects and information thoughout the year.

Wikis

Some of the activities that I learned about in School Library Learning 2.0 changed how I do some things in my library. The most helpful to me was learning about wikis. I set up a library wiki for my library aides. I place all of their assignments here. In addition, they post their completed assignments here. Students can access the wiki at school or at home. I find it extrememly helpful to have everything organized in one spot.

My library wiki is located at: http://dsmslibrary.pbwiki.com.

Week 9, Thing 23

This has been a great opportunity. Last spring I began hearing about Web2.0, but I really wasn't sure what it was all about and what the point was. I really can't believe how much I've learned!

I especially enjoyed using the image generators. I was able to use some of my creations as part of my PR campaign for my author visit so this activity was very timely. Library Thing has also been a great find. I am continuing to add books from my home collection so that I'll be able to track what I have. The social aspect of this site as well as the social bookmarking sites has been fun too. However, I think that learning about wikis and the collaboration tools on Zoho and Google Docs may be the most useful for encouraging collaboration at school.

This week I created my first wiki for school. It is called DSMS Best Practices and can be found at http://dsmsbestpractices.pbwiki.com/ . The password is dsms in case anyone would like to add something to it. It's new so I'm still figuring out what to do, and I'm just now introducing it to some key teachers before I share it with the whole staff. I plan to share it with our new teachers before school starts. It will be interesting to see where it goes.

The first week of July, my husband and I, 3 administrators, and 9 other teachers from our school attended the Model School conference in Washington D.C. This conference tied in wonderfully with this program. These 2 experiences propelled my husband and me into moving forward with technology on a personal level. It was time for new cell phones and we decided that we needed to upgrade to phones with Web2.0 capabilities. I now check my email, my rss feeds, and library thing regularly wherever I am. Already I wonder how I lived with a cell phone that only made phone calls. I also bought a new laptop just for me. We have just a few laptops at school and that is often a problem. While I keep one in the library there is still the problem sometimes of too many users. Now I have what I need when I need it. Next, it was time to make some upgrades at home. We live in an area with no cable access so we were still using dial-up which really was not effective. So we decided to install a satellite system (which is wonderful). Then we decided to install a wireless network system at home so my husband and I can both use our computers at the same time and I can go anywhere in my house (or on my deck) and use my computer.

I appreciate that this class was set up to allow people to work at their own pace. I was gone most of the summer but was still able to work on this class at my convenience. The only suggestion I would make would be to possible have a page on the wiki or a blog for tips, suggestions, and technology support. I learned some great tips on how to make things work by reading other people's blogs, but it would be nice to things in one place.

I would definitely participate in another program similar to this and I will recommend this to others. This has truly been one of the most useful learning experiences that I've had.

This is just the beginning!

Week 9, Thing 22

I am a huge fan of audio books when I am traveling. As I stated earlier, I checked out Full Cast Audio http://www.fullcastaudio.com/ and really like it. I listened to some samples and I think this format would be very appealing to students. When I get back to school (next week - hard to believe that we're starting a new year!) I plan to order a couple to see how they go. Also, I haven't tried the playaways yet, but it's time. One of the communities in my area offers small grants for schools so I think I'll apply for one and see if I can get some playaways that way. (I think it's important to check the quality when using free audio books - we're trying to hook readers.)

I have several reference eBooks from Gale that I am really happy with. However, reading eBooks for pleasure seems much more limiting to me. I definitely can see using excerpts or short stories for class projects though. The World eBook Fair has already ended for the year, but I did check out the Gutenburg Project site. I saved the Grimm's Fairy Tales http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/grimm10.txt to use in preparation for our author's visit with Michael Buckley.

Funny Teacher Rant

Those of us who have been in education any length of time identify with this.

Week 9, Thing 21

As I was exploring podcasts, I focused on educational ones. In the Educational Podcast Directory, I discovered Mabry Middle School which is a good example of how a school could utilize podcasts. I listened to an interview with Bruce Coville done by Book Voyages. I found it interesting that Bruce produces Full Cast Audio Books http://www.fullcastaudio.com/ . I enjoyed his discussion and will explore this further when I work on Thing 22. Bruce also stated that the books he's most proud of are Skull of Truth and My Teacher Flunked the Planet. I really enjoyed Skull of Truth, but haven't read his Teacher series yet. Bruce also talked about passion as being key to getting students excited about reading.

I also found Nancy Keane's Book Talks Quick and Simple http://podcasts.yahoo.com/series?s=7ead099872bb0870a7b5211f91661d84&i=2 that I really enjoyed. I plan to subscribe to this one.

On Tuesday, August 14, our local newspaper had an article on the front page dealing with iPods, "Banned: School to students: Leave iPods at home" http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007708140316 . This article led to the opinion page on Wednesday being dedicated to discussion on utilizing iPods for educational purposes. "Digital natives" is a label being used to describe this generation of students. There is definitely a "digital divide" between these students and many of the adults in their lives. This is why offering this class, School Library Learning 2.0 is so important.

Week 9, Thing 20

Using video to make a point can be very efficient. Today there are so many choices available that it is can be overwhelming. (I spent a lot of time this week on You Tube and Teacher Tube just browsing.) Students and teachers often seem to have short attention spans (inservice meetings start Aug. 29 for us and no one wants to sit and listen) and appropriate short clips can engage the audience and share a message quickly in a manner that interests the viewer.

One of my pet peeves at school are the teachers who overuse and abuse videos and DVD's. We have way too many teachers who frequently show videos and waste valuable classroom time. The students are bored and don't pay attention and the teacher grades papers or does other paper work during the time so there is no interaction with the medium. Instead, a focus on finding video clips to visually demonstrate the lesson would be productive and powerful. At school we have a subscription to United Streaming and it is underused - I plan to work with teachers more this year in utilizing this resource.

Week 8, Thing 19

Library Thing is a wonderful find. As I posted earlier, my husband and I had discusssed cataloging our home library and this is perfect. It's very easy to use. I borrowed a scanner from school and just scan in the ISBN number (some paperbacks have to be entered by hand). I also added the mobile feature to our cell phones so that we can search our home library while in book stores, etc. Tags and reviews can be added quickly. I've also enjoyed exploring the groups and seeing how many other people own the same books that I do.

As I started adding books from my collection, I decided to tag my autographed copies. Using the blog widget under tools, I added some of my autographed books to my blog (scroll down and look on the left).

I see the advantage of using Library Thing at school to share the new books we've added to our collection. I also think I will use Library Thing with my library aides to write reviews and add books that they've read and books that they are interested in. (I usually have 2 - 4 student aides each period and I like to have an activity for them to work on for those times that I do not need their help; I've had them make posters, create PowerPoint presentations, create newsletters, etc.)

Now I need to upgrade to a lifetime memebership and just begin scanning in our books.

Week 8, Thing 18

I really see the value of these online productivity tools. Both Zoho and Google Docs are very easy to use. For me, one of the main advantages is the ability to upload documents that I have already created. I have tons of lessons that I have saved that would be great for interested teachers to have (one teacher that I collaborated with extensively has transferred to another school and this is a great way for her to continue with those lessons that we have already successfully used). I practiced uploading a Word document with an image to both Zoho and Google Docs. The only thing that I needed to do in both was to space between paragraphs. I now have access to these wherever I am and can make these documents public, share them certain people, or link them to my wiki. I am currently creating this in Zoho Writer and will publish it to my blog when I am finished (hopefully).

Of course, the collaborative aspect is huge also. Two years ago, a 6th great teacher and I collaborated on an Ancient Civilizations Diary project. After planning, I created a Word document detailing the project. We successfully implemented the project, but needed to make some changes. It was the end of the year, so we didn't get around to making the changes. The next year rolled around and it was time to the project again. The teacher couldn't find her paper copy. I had to search a little to find it on my computer. I make the changes we discussed then attached it to her in an email. With Zoho or Google Docs, both of us have access to this lesson and we can now share it with the other 6th grade Social Studies teachers. We will be able to weed out those filing cabinets and binders and update our projects easily.

Zoho has a presentation system (Google Docs currently does not). I uploaded 2 PowerPoint presentations to Zoho (most of my presentations are at school so I was limited in choices). The first one was too large (26 slides with lots of images) and the last few slides did not show up. The 2nd one was fine and can be accessed at http://show.zoho.com/public/dragon_lady/CSLA%20Presentation%20Opening%20PPT.ppt2 . Some of the images need to be repositioned and the animated graphics are now stills. Zoho recommends that the upload be read only. When I deselected the read only option, the PowerPoint did not upload as nicely - not everything transferred and words like header, etc. showed up. On the other hand, it is very easy to create a presentation, and while Zoho is more basic than PowerPoint, it would be useful as a collaborative tool for short presentations.

I do plan on using Google calendar this year for my both my library calendar and for the laptop carts that teachers check out.

Week 7, Thing 17

I really like the idea of sharing curriculum ideas and a wiki is a wonderful way to do it. I would like to see us start a best practices wiki at our school (encouraging others in our district as well as other interested people to participate). We have a wealth of knowledge among us, but so often do not share it - there's never enough time, we don't think anyone is interested, what we're doing seems so obvious, we have an idea but it needs to be tweaked, etc. Wikis allow us to work at our convenience from anywhere so it invites participation at a different level than face-to-face interaction (which is still important - we don't have to exclude whatever works for people).

I added two ideas to the Photos and Images to California 2.0 Curriculum Connections:

Idea #12: Create a CD cover. When collaborating with your music teacher, go to Foxy Tunes Planet http://www.foxytunes.com/planet and select the criteria and widgets that you want students to use when researching a musician. Students can read a biography, listen to music, watch a video, look at pictures, read song lyrics, etc. Using information from this site, have students create a CD cover using Flickr Toys http://www.bighugelabs.com/flickr/ adding a picture and text.

Idea #13: Create the front page of a newspaper. Using the newspaper generator at http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp, have each student create their own front page. This would be a great activity for Back to School night. Each student could write a brief article on the most important thing they have learned so far. This would also be a good activity to use to have students summarize content covered.

Week 7, Thing 16

I became aware of using wikis for educational purposes last spring. We have a new administrative team and one of our main goals for this year is collaboration (we are a low performing school in a low income area with obvious test score problems). Wikis just seem like an obvious tool to aide in this endeavor.

Fourteen of our staff attended the Model School Conference in Washington D.C. in June. At the end of the conference we met to debrief and discuss how we would share our information and insight with staff members in the fall. We left with a vague plan of reporting out at the first staff meeting, then going more in-depth at subsequent staff meetings, but it didn't feel quite right. I think the missing component is the wiki. We can all contribute to the wiki; those that of us that attended the same sessions can just edit and add on to what someone else has written. We can provide links. Those of us that attended the conference can then have all the information together and we can share with everyone else who is interested.

At the end of the conference, my principal made a profound statement - he said that maybe our test scores aren't improving because we're focusing on test scores. I think this is a belief that many of us have. The Web 2.0 technologies can help us focus on student engagement and learning which is what will improve education.

As I looked at various wikis, I found lots of ideas that I think would work well and be easy to implement. I have been a proponent of literature circles for years (I had great success with them when I was a 6th grade teacher, but I haven't been able to convince my teachers - I think it goes back to test scores and pacing guides). I looked at an example of adding a wiki as a component to the literature circles and I think that's a great idea. Of course, having students and staff write book reviews is an obvious use. I also like the idea of using wikis to take notes and for group research.

I also read "Ten Reasons Why Your Next Pathfinder Should be a Wiki" by Joyce Valenza. This article puts it all together for me and is applicable for uses other than pathfinders. The idea of having everything in one place with whatever links and uploads you need is wonderful. The idea that the teacher(s) and I can both add content is actually liberating. I can see each grade level subject team creating a wiki for the year with each member contributing according the his/her strengths.

Now on to creating a wiki for our June conference...

Week 6, Thing 15

One journal that I subscribe to is MultiMedia & Internet @ Schools http://www.mmischools.com/. In the May/June issue is an artitle that deals with Web 2.0, "Collaboration in Today's Classrooms: New Web Tools Change the Game" by Kelly Driscoll. This is a very good explanation of Web 2.0 that is easy to understand. The focus of Web 2.0 is communication. The appeal of these technologies is that they are easy to use, usually free, interactive, and give us access at home, school, or wherever we may be. These technologies are motivating and can be used in schools to engage students. We must involve students in their own learning. (In the July/August issue is an article titled "Mashups and Other New or Improved Collaborative Social Sofware Tools" by Robert J. Lackie and Robert D. Terrio that has excellent definitions and explanations.)

Tom Storey in the article "Where will the Next Generation Web Take Libraries" states, "The Web moves from simply being sites and search engines to a shared network space that drives work, research, education, entertainment and social activites." This is a philosophical shift that many in schools are just now embracing (if it is not being ignored completely). I feel that schools tend to be reactive instead of proactive. If we want schools to be successful, we must provide meaningful opportunities for students to be involved with the content. Web 2.0 technologies encourage students to be active rather than passive learners.

In many of the articles about Web 2.0 and Library 2.0, collaboration is stressed as a key advantage. With these technologies, collaboration is no longer limited to working with the person next to you - the whole world is a possibility.

My most practical concern at this point is access at school. Currently, all blogs are blocked in my district. This is going to be a dialogue that many educators are going to have to have with their administrators and IT departments.