Back to School in a Web 2.0 World

The sight of big yellow school buses and children with backpacks walking the sidewalks are emerging throughout the United States and several other countries. In many schools, teachers have already been working in their rooms for weeks preparing for children to fill their classrooms. But the preparation is no longer limited to an isolated teacher sorting through the bulletin board supplies alone in his or her classroom; more and more teachers have been using Web 2.0 tools to reach beyond their classrooms to prepare for a successful year.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cookipedia/ / CC BY 2.0

About a month ago, Steven Anderson, (aka as web20classroom on Twitter ) sent out a tweet looking for some great First Day Back activities. He also put this request on his blog. For those who have heard of Twitter but not tried it yet, check out this great Twitter in Plain English video from the folks at Common Craft.

Steven's personal learning network did not let him down. Within a few weeks over 50 people had filled out the simple GOOGLE FORM with wonderful tools, tips, tricks, resources, and advice for the first day of school. (It's not too late to add your own first day favorites.)

As soon as you fill out this form with your own advice, the results automatically appear in Steve's Google spreadsheet. With just a couple keystrokes Steve was able to share these suggestions with you by making his spreadsheet visible to the public over the Internet. This simple easy to use way of collecting information is being by used educators daily to collect and display data from their colleagues and students.

Steve used his blog to highlight a few of his favorite suggestions such as the way Ms. DeSilva uses
http://stixy.com/ to "post a welcome sticky on the board explaining to students that I would like each of them to drag a sticky to the board and on it to introduce themselves and tell us something about themselves that they would like to share with the class." Steve also shares the full list of suggestions with you by linking to the published Google spreadsheet.

Within minutes of exploring these suggestions I found myself gleaning lots of advice from educators from every discipline sharing their First Day Activities on a collaborative First Day Wiki set up by geometry teacher Dan Myer's (not to mention all the first day suggestions offered within the comments of Mr. Meyer's First Day blog post.

If your first days of school activities got your year off on the right foot, why not share them with other educators by adding to this wiki. If you've never contributed to a wiki before, here's your chance to share with others outside your school wall. Commoncraft video “Wikis in Plain English” offers an excellent introduction to the world of wikis.

And if your first day didn't quite turn out as well as you planned, don't despair, many of these suggestions can be used any day or even help you start over as suggested by Alice Mercer, Larry Ferlaza and others on the Starting Over Page of the First Day Wiki.

As we move beyond the world of Web 1.0 (the sermon) and surround ourselves with the tools of Web 2.0 (the conversation) , I encourage you to experiment with tools like Twitter, wikis, and blogs to join the myriad of educators who are changing the culture of teaching from one of the loneliest and most isolated professions to one connected with colleagues from all over the world and with rich resources provided by YOU using today's collaborative tools. For more information in creating this culture, check out Alan Novembers article "Creating a New Culture of Teaching and Learning or just jump in, reach out, and connect and get your school year off to a roaring start.

Wikis in Education Celebration September 11th, 2008

(Cross-posted from www.stevehargadon.com)

Wikispaces has given away 100,000 ad-free educational wikis, and has just announced they are going to give away 250,000 more. We're going to celebrate the general use of wikis in education and Wikispace's amazing milestone by having founder Adam Frey and the Wikispaces team join us Thursday evening, September 11, 2008, for an open Classroom 2.0 discussion of the use of wikis in education.

If you are using wikis in education, or if you want to learn why you might consider doing so, please join us at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / Midnight GMT in our Elluminate room. We'll have lots of time for Q&A, which you are welcome to start beforehand in the forum discussion on Classroom 2.0.

If you haven't used Elluminate before,.you can use the following link to verify your system compatibility with their online meeting tool: http://www.elluminate.com/support/. If you are not in the US, here's a time-clock link.

Kudos to Wikispaces, and to all educators who are exploring the use of Web 2.0 in education!

Shopping for A Wiki Tool?

When educators ask me what tool I would recommend as an entry point to using Web 2.0 in education, I usually suggest “wikis” as a quick way to get started. WikiWiki is the Hawaiian term for “quick” and you can’t get much quicker than a wiki when trying to publish content to the world wide web.

For the web publishing consumer who desires “flexible design elements” with the ability to create a stunning and unique “look and feel” for their web content, a wiki is NOT the right tool. But if you are looking for easy and quick when publishing content to the web, you can’t get much more “wikiwiki” or “quick” than a wiki.
(Photo Credit)

In his book, Raw Materials for the Mind: A Teacher's Guide to Digital Literacy, David Warlick, suggest that we "Avoid training teachers to use sophisticated web editing software. Teachers are not web masters... they are communicators. Help them to communicate" (p. 280). Wikis not only help teachers and students to communicate, but to collaborate.

ITM blogger, Mark Wagner’s post about wikis and CUE article, "Why Wiki?" provide a great introduction to the world of wikis, as does his K-12 online conference session “Wiki While You Work”. Commoncraft’s reputation for short-easy to understand videos, offers another ‘quick’ introduction to help beginners understand wiki’s.

But even within the “quick and easy” world of wikis, more and more new features are being offered to cater to the needs of various type of consumers – including the educator. The features are so many that sites such as

http://www.wikimatrix.org/ have emerged to help you compare the features of over 100 wiki tools. Although such a matrix, can certainly help you understand the scope of features available with different tools, I believe that James Suroweiki and Malcolm Gladwell would agree that the best way to find out the ‘best wiki tool” for educators, is to ask other educators. I invite Infinite Thinking Readers to share their wiki experience in two areas. (1) What wiki features best meet the needs of educators and which wiki tools contain those features and (2) What are some examples of “wikis” used in exemplary ways in education.

I’ll start the conversation by highlighting two features that I feel are key to helping teachers get started with using wikis in their classrooms: 1) the cost of ‘free’ 2) simplicity.

If advertisements in exchange for “free” are keeping you away, check out sites like Wikispaces PBwiki, and WetPaint which offer educators “ad-free” wikis. Since 2006, the folks at wikispaces have been offering their Plus Plan (which usually sells for $50 a year) free to K-12 educators. This plan removes usage limits and advertisements for your educational wikis. It even allows you to set the wiki to private mode (where only “space members” can view and edit pages). To enroll in this program you must certify that your wiki space will be used for k12 education by signing up at http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers

I usually recommend Wikispaces for teachers just starting out using wiki’s because it is one of the simplest sites to manage. It may have less ‘features’ than other wiki tools, but sometimes LESS is MORE, when you are looking for a simple easy way to get started. Beginning teachers don’t miss “extra” seldom used features and welcome the simplicity. The one feature that I did miss is the ability to change font color – until last week. Thank you, to Adam Frey, and the folks at Wikispaces for adding this feature.
http://blog.wikispaces.com/2008/03/bringing-color-to-your-wiki.html.

Despite its simple, easy to use, interface, Wikispaces has included extra features that many educators will might find very useful as their use of wikis increases. Check out the “discussion” , “history”, and the “notify” me tab. The discussion tab allows users to communicate about a page without having to actually edit the page For example, a student can post new poetry on their page, and others can offer “comments” in the discussion area. The history tab allows you to ‘revert’ back to previous version of your wiki page, which is comforting in case of “accidentally” or “intentional” undesired changes. It also has a “compare” feature which makes for a great formative assessment tool for teachers looking to measure change over time in a student product. Finally the “notify me” tab is a great way for an educator to keep track of when someone makes changes to your wiki. This can be done with email notification or through an RSS feed. This will save an educator time, by giving him/her updates when their students or colleagues update their pages.

Even though the simplicity of wiki’s make them a very accessible tool to use in the classroom, the real key to using this collaboration tool lies in how these tools are used. Check out collections such as http://educationalwikis.wikispaces.com/ or educators.pbwiki.com/Best%20practices%20and%20examples to learn more ways to use wikis in education and to see hundreds of examples of education related wikis.

Other wiki tools I plan to cover in upcoming post because of their responsiveness to the needs of education are PBwiki, WetPaint and SeedWiki. Won't you help me, by sharing your favorite features of these wiki tools: What features you look for in a wiki tool and how has thus feature increases your effectiveness as a educator?

Best of 2006: Resources for Teachers

For the past few years, I have been publishing a weekly list of links for educators and this fall, I began using Google Groups to manage this listserv. Because I spend a fair amount of time each week perusing various web sites and resources for teachers, I thought I'd share a few of my favorites this week. There's quite a variety here!

1) U.S Geological Survey

This site contains a mindboggling amount of scientific data and there's a section especially geared towards educators. My favorite part contains RSS feeds and downloadable Google Earth files of recent earthquake activity around the globe.

2) Room 132 Video Blog

Last school year, Room 132 teacher Bre Pettis made some pretty amusing and informative videos on events in his classroom. Bre has moved on to bigger things now, educating adults at Make magazine. These videos convey a sense of fun and enthusiasm for learning and help me remember why I am teacher.

3) 100,000 Wikis in the Classroom

My favorite word as a teacher is FREE, and Wikispaces is generously donating 100,000 free wikis to educators. I plunged into the world of wikis this year with a sixth grade collaborative computer science research project, and I was pleased as punch with the results. I'm excited to learn more about wikis through other ITM bloggers and from Adam Frey of Wikispaces, who will be presenting at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators in March. I serve on the conference committee for this annual event, and Adam has offered to create a wiki for the conference!

4) Google For Educators: Global Warming Student Speakout

Google For Educator's inaugural project (co-sponsored by Global SchoolNet) was another hit with my students. They mastered spreadsheets, both in Excel and in Google Spreadsheets and Docs, found relevant videos on Google Video, worked collaboratively in teams, and learned a bit about global warming in the process. I'm looking forward to other projects that Google may cook up for us in the future!

5) Apple Learning Interchange 2006 - Rethink. Global Awareness.

I've been fortunate to be a part of the Apple Distinguished Educator program for the past year or so, and my participation in this education community has changed my professional life in so many ways. Many ADEs, along with representatives from EF Educational Tours, traveled last summer to Berlin and Prague to create a global awareness curriculum. My view of the world has broadened and deepened because of this project, and I now understand how vital it is for teachers to bring the world to their students via technology, if not through actual experience.

The resulting project is housed in the Apple Learning Interchange which was redesigned in the past year. Now, any teacher can upload lessons and digital objects to share, rate and comment on projects of others, and subscribe to RSS feeds showing new additions to the collections. Additionally, any media in the ALI can be downloaded to your iTunes library.

Please feel free to point out any favorite web sites or projects of your own choosing by posting information in the comments section of this post. Stay tuned for my next ITM entry in which I suggest some ed tech resolutions for 2007!

I should add that I took the above picture in Berlin at an exhibition of Buddy Bears. Visit this web site to learn more about this international project. In July, 2006, the bears were on display in Bebelplatz, a square near Humboldt University.

Best of 2006: The Read/Write Web in Education

It's the winter break for many educators (at least in North America). Email has slowed to a trickle and most educational blogs are not being updated. During this time of reflection and rejuvenation we'll be celebrating the new year (along with the rest of the world). We at the ITM have discussed posting several "best of 2006" (or "predictions for 2007") posts to mark the occasion. For my part, I've identified five trends in the educational use of the read/write web that I've felt had a significant impact on my work - and ultimately, the work of teachers and students. In each case I discuss a free (and teacher-friendly) service.

For the sake of brevity, I've posted my predictions separately.

1. Educational Blogging at Edublogs.org (and learnerblogs.org): Though blogs and educational blogging have been around for several years, and though James Farmer's Edublogs.org was created in 2005, the impact of these tools grew a great deal in 2006. In February, I switched from using Blogger to using Edublogs when leading blogging workshops for teachers. In addition to being able to post text and pictures (and being able to receive comments), teachers could now post Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files, too. There were no random links to embarrassing or inappropriate blogs, and teachers could set up various levels of permissions for comments and for participants in team blogs. To boot, the tools were free and open source. Also, in June 2006, ITM blogger (and open source advocate) Steve Hargadon created supportblogging.com, which quickly became a valuable resource for teachers interested in these ideas. Read my predictions for 2007.

2. Educational Podcasting at podomatic.com: Podcasting began in 2004, and in 2005 my colleagues and I began leading workshops in which we helped teachers jump through many technical hoops in order to "easily" post a podcast. Podomatic was founded in 2005, but it wasn't until 2006 that we started using the service to help teachers and students. Now, teachers can create a new podcast episode by simply uploading an audio file that they've created using a free program such as Audacity. Or, for even greater simplicity, they can record directly into Podomatic over the web. The hosting of the audio files is free and the system takes care of most of the back end technical issues, creating a blog-like website complete with comments. Read my predictions for 2007.

3. Educational Wikis at Wikispaces.com: Though wikis have been around even longer than blogs, they are arguably behind blogs in educational adoption. But, in January 2006, Wikispaces.com started offering free (and add free) Wikis to teachers. Ten thousand wikis later, the company was so impressed by the work teachers and students were doing on their free wikis that they launched a campaign to give away 100,000 wikis to teachers. Today they are nearing the 20,000 mark. These wikis not only allow teachers to create collaboratively edited online resources, but also to post images and files as well. (I've written about educational use of wikis on the ITM before.) Read my predictions for 2007.

4. Google in Education: When we look back on 2006, this may very well be the biggest impact. This is the year Google began working in the k12 arena (an effort now headed up by Cristin Frodella). They launched the Google for Educators site, and played an critical role in the launch of this blog, the Infinite Thinking Machine. Google also released several new products that benefit educators who use the read/write web... particularly the easy to use RSS aggregator, Google Reader (for keeping up to date on news, blogs, and other "feeds") and the web-based word processor Google Docs (for creating, sharing, and collaboratively editing documents online). Though they existed prior to 2006, free desktop applications such as Picasa and Google Earth have been heavily used in education this year as well. (Of course, the newly updated Blogger is also still used by many educators.) Read my predictions for 2007.

5. The Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 (DOPA): This may be the biggest change that didn't happen in 2006. Call it the biggest disaster averted (at least in the United States). Introduced in May 2006, the bill proposed to protect students from online predators by limiting their access to "social networking websites," which could have potentially limited student access to a wide range of websites, including everything I've mentioned above. In July, the house of representatives passed the bill by an amazing 410 to 15, and it seemed as if the Senate would quickly follow suit, thus placing an additional burden on many schools receiving federal funding - and placing a significant obstacle in the path of enterprising teachers using these tools with their students. Happily, organizations such as SaveYourSpace.org rose to the occasion and opposed the bill, which has languished in the Senate since before their August recess. Read my predictions for 2007.

Please feel free to discuss these read/write web trends (and predictions), and to leave ones of your own, in the comments. I look forward to reading your reactions.

PS: The image above was taken by Alan Levine and generously shared under the Creative Commons Attribution license on his Flickr account. Read his prediction about Creative Commons licensing in the comments for this post.