FETC+2010

Attending: Shelly Stamler, Marissa Phirangee-Gentles, Laurie Miller, Tom Dughi, Melissa Ross, Eric Nelson

From Shelly: WIKIS, THINKQUEST, GOOGLE EARTH

//**WIKIS**// I attended one session on how one school uses wikis. I watched the youtube video on "Wikis in Plain English" this morning at home. A wiki makes sense when a group is collaborating on something. A wiki would take the place of those emails that go on forever as people are replying to one another. So, I wanted try one out. I made a wiki for the middle school 8th grade English curriculum. Using wikispaces seemed easy at first; however, when I typed in the email addresses of the faculty members I wanted to be included (a seemingly easy step) things went awry. I will get help from Marisa on the technical aspects of setting one up on Tuesday when we get back to school.

(from JAK: See the Youtube video to which Shelly refers here): media type="youtube" key="-dnL00TdmLY" height="344" width="425"

Ok, so now what do I want to use it for? I thought it would be very useful for the 8th grade teachers to "embed" any new projects in the wiki, describe them in the text, and then write about the ins and the outs of actually doing the project. We could pictures in the Wiki as well. Sometimes I hear about a great project or a new way of doing things by chance, and this would be a great way of posting new and exciting things our creative faculty is doing.

I did a new technology project with Romeo and Juliet this year. It was a huge hit with the kids. I want to embed the project in the wiki, and then write about my experiences doing it for the first time. If someone next year wants to do the project, they will have all the info - including rubrics, etc. and my experiences in doing it. Then, I would hope they would write about their experiences and how they tweaked it. I might want to use their tweaks.

I would also like to see our grade level teams have a wiki to discuss issues specific to the grade level. (from JAK: I set this up last fall, would this work--you are, of course, welcome to use it: http://recurriculum.wikispaces.com/).

I think wikis could be a very useful tool for collaboration.

Any ideas on how to use this for my class? I wanted to do one with my class for a discussion, but I thought maybe just a blog might be just as good. Any thoughts? (I put all documents on Edline, so I really don't need the wiki for that.) (from JAK: Discussions are very easy on wikispaces--just use the discussion tab at the top of the page. I use them for my two sections of philosophy and the kids have responded pretty well. I set the wiki up so that I monitor the discussion, that way I know what is happening and who is responsible for what is happening! I think Tom is doing something similar in his AP English class. Let me know if you need some pointers.)

//**THINKQUEST from the Oracle Foundation (Everything free on the site.)**// A speaker was talking about this website, and I visited its booth in the exhibit hall. I actually want to create a wiki FOR MY CLASS on this website because as a teacher I have more control over what is posted and who is posting it. I tried to join yesterday, but I have to have a person from the school who can sign contracts sign for it online. As the speaker said "It is a safe environment for collaboration." Also, ThinkQuest has a lot of content. By the way, they will come to the school for FREE and explain how to use ThinkQuest. All they require is 25 faculty members to be at the presentation.

//**GoogleLitTrip and GOOGLE EARTH**// I attended a session on these tools, as I want to do a interactive tech project using The Odyssey. I have great ideas, but the technical aspects are daunting for me, but Marisa will be by my side, as she was for the Romeo and Juliet project.

My students love working with all of this technology. I never see them more engaged and happy (not looking at the clock) when they are collaborating on digital projects. So, my job as a teacher is to find new ways to teach the skills that I need to teach. "We need teachers who are willing to change, who understand that our society has changed and our schools need to change." Chris Lehman