Category Archives: wikis

Elementary Wiki Wonderland

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I presented my session, Elementary Wiki Wonderland on Friday morning. I wanted to share the links to my presentation wiki and class wiki. I was thrilled with the amazing teachers I met who are as excited about wikis and Web tools as I am. It is so fun to share! The MACUL conference is where I learned about wikis from Julie Myrmel and Diane Rich in Hudsonville two years ago and I am happy to be able to share this with others.  My presentation wiki also has information on how I use Blogs in my classroom as well as blogging resources. Be sure to check out the Wiki and Blog links to see how other educators around the world are using these tools with their students, as well as the Web 2.0 Tools page. I will continue to add to the presentation wiki. I plan to create tutorials on how to add users to your wiki and how to use the manage wiki settings. I am happy to answer questions, feel free to email me or contact me through the MACUL space ning (and while you are there, Join the MACUL space ning. It is another great way to connect with amazing eductors in Michigan.)

Plan for the Conference Online!

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As mentioned in Kevin’s earlier post today, the Conference Program Book is hot off the digital presses! Which means it’s time to start planning. And if you don’t have your cigar ready to go (you really should read Kevin’s earlier post), there are plenty of options for you to plan ahead online:

Start Your Own Conference Wiki
Always a popular option by the more tech savvy attendees, you could use Wikispaces, PBWiki, or Wetpaint to start your own conference wiki. Create pages for all of the sessions you’d like to attend, or just organize your thoughts online ahed of time, then come conference you have a nice online notebook ready to fill with notes, discoveries, and more. Bonus points for coordinating and collaborating with other members in your school district.

Do Your Homework
Many, if not all, of the featured speakers at the conference have their own blogs. They probably have Twitter accounts, wikis of their own, and social bookmarks that they’ve shared online. Pop the featured speakers names into Google and see what comes up. Pick out the good stuff, and subscribe to it, or bookmark it for future reference. Gold stars for people who use an RSS Reader to automatically pull in content from multiple sources about MACUL 09.

Start/Join a Discussion on the MACUL Space Forum
Alright, so I’m a little biased to this one, but there are already a few posts in the dedicated 2009 Conference discussions on the MACUL Space forum. You can use any of the three discussions to create or join a conversation about the Conference Sessions, Workshops, or Guerrilla Sessions. Might help to get an idea of where other people in the state that have simliar interests are planning on spending a lot of their time at the conference. Extra credit for starting a new topic about a presentation you’ll be giving.

Of course, there are plenty of others ways to plan and coordinate online for the upcoming conference, but downloading a PDF of the Conference Program Book is a good way to start.

Doing Web 2.0

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Michael McVey is a new professor Eastern Michigan University who began teaching a class, Web 2.0 Tools in Education, or something similar.  He basically threw a huge number of Web 2.0 tools at his students to see which would stick and which would be thrown away.  Everything was done in an online environment and he discovered that some work, and of course, some don’t.

Michael’s take on Web 2.0:

Recipients become Communicators…

How did they begin?  Started by using Flickr…everyone understands photo sharing.  What else did they use?

One of the first assignments was to create a social network on Ning.  As they set up their social network, they were also researching sites and tagging them in del.icio.us.  This then created a common pool of information to reference.

They used Doodle to schedule meeting times.  They also dessiminated information by podcasting with Gcast…also used podOmatic.

Every student was required to set up a blog on Blogger, which Michael subscribed to via Bloglines.  Bloglines is a aggregator that collects and keeps track of new entries to the blogs (and other sites) you subscribe to.  Because students were connected to each other and the writing/sharing that was going on, their own writing was positively affected.

Students also stayed connected via Twitter.  Wrote collaboratively with Google Docs and PBwiki.

Michael really enjoyed watching how deep and thoughtful student writing and ideas became.

What were some of the conclusions? (Oh…he’s going too fast.)  Obviously, some good and some not as good.  Probably won’t use Twitter again…it didn’t really help with collaboration.

Good job, Michael.  You have a lot of first hand experience that benefitted the rest of us.  The last session on Friday is probably the worst time to have your presentation, but there were lots of folks and everyone stayed until the end.

Top Ten Sites with Steve Dembo

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This was a FANTASTIC session. I see Steve Dickie already evaluated the session, but I would like to reiterate how good the session was. I was impressed that I learned about three new sites that I was not aware of. Now I can’t wait to play and see how the sites work. We put on a 5 county wide tech academy every summer and I can see the possibility of making this a full day session with teachers actually learning how to use them and brainstorming the best ways to use them with students.

I will name them off as several people have asked about the session since they were not able to attend!

http://top10freesites.pbwiki.com

1.bloglines.com (using RSS, store all your blogs in one place)
2.del.icio.us (social bookmarking system)
3.Flickr.com (photo storage and much more! Create trading cards, memory games. It finds flickr photos with the same titles and puts them into the memory game)
There are Creative commons licenses that allows you to use the photos- gives the ways you can use it legally.)
4. Picnik http://picnik.com (This is so cool! This is new to me. Find pictures from Flickr to edit that you have the right to edit.)
5. www.jumpcut.com (Will let you store videos online privately. You can also do some simple editing)
6. Gcast http://gcast.com (Safe site. Upload your audio to gCast and it will create a flash player with your podcast. You can do modcasting by adding audio from your phone. Call 1-88-65-GCAST and use your pin.)
7. Garageband.com (Has nothing to so with the Apple program. Steve said if you can download the audio you can use it in your Podcast. Just state where you can got the audio)
8. pbwiki.com and wikispaces (Both good free wiki creation sites)
9. Google Docs and spreadsheets (Multiple people work on a document or spreadsheet at the same time. I have been using this since it was Writely and it saves so much time!)
10. vyew.com free webex software (share your screen online and notes online)

Web 2.0 on Steroids

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OK, Steve Demob is going to be another one of those speakers I look for at these meetings. Steve went through about 20 or 30 different websites while highlighting his Top 10 Free Web 2.0 Sites. All his links are available at 10freesites.pbwiki.com, so I won’t list them all here.

Here are some of the cool new things I learned:

  • Jumpcut – A free online video creation/editing site now allows you to do the Ken Burns Effect with your photos
  • Picnik – This is a free online image editor. I’ve heard of it before, but I’ve never used it. I will now. It does all the basic editing you need. You can upload photos or you can pull them directly from the web (including your Flickr). When you’re done editing you can save them, email them, dump them to Flickr, or send them to a number of places that will print them out for you.
  • Vyew – Webinars free on the web. You can use your browser to host a webinar. The participants, who only need a browser, can watch your presentations or you can share a real time screen cast. There is a chat window available and you can share audio by having participants call into a phone number. Up to 100 people can call into the free version!

Steve talked about a lot of stuff more than I will mention here. His list of 10 Free Sites is great and you should give it a look.