Wikis
Ever wonder what you as a teacher can do to help your students engage in an assignment, take ownership, and collaborate with not only students in their own class, but with students around the globe? Well, wikispaces are the perfect outlet to achieve this! Wikispaces does all of the above plus increase productivity and teachers can track participation by seeing who edits the page. I never thought that Wikispaces could provide this educational opportunity. I even explored some Wikispaces to learn more about it this resource.
I researched the DiRT wiki that houses digital research tools. This wiki was full of information about the types of tools that are available on the web. The site is a one-stop-shop for tools based on categories. Once you pick a category it then moves you to another page that list all of the tools that allow you to accomplish that task. Each linked page is complete with a detailed list of information with an explanation of what the tool can perform. Visually, it is not appealing, but granted they have since moved to a new site. I feel that this wiki provides all of the information that I would expect it to even including references, explanations, even a glossary page to help for those who are not familiar with the lingo. I then visited the UNSW wiki page to see just what students are able to create with a blank canvas or wiki for that matter. I was quite impressed with the ability and freedom that the students have. I can tell that profound effort was made to make this wiki flow from section to section, hyperlinked words to connect you to other pages and embed videos and podcasts. The wiki also hosted a discussion post that provided great insight into their topic and built upon the original post. The wikispace was well designed so much that it earned 2nd runner-up in the 2009 international Edublogs award in the category of Educational Wiki. I wanted to then see a blog that was created as a collaborative space for a teacher’s classroom and I visited FHS Wolves Den wikispace. Excellent wiki to look at if you need to see an example of how to connect and involve your students in this space. The teacher posted class assignments complete with links and documents. Not only does this teacher provide resources for her students, but she also provides information for other teachers. This wikispace also hosts discussion posts, polls for the students to participate in, and educational games. This wikispace is acting as learning management system and it seemed to work for this teacher and her classes. It can be a little overwhelming as an outsider looking in to see all of the information, but I am sure that if you were a student and knew what was going on the class you may be able to navigate the site a little better. With all of this research of wiki spaces, I wanted to create my own space so I can collaborate with others! My wikispace is for collaboration among teachers and I especially want to reach out to first-year teachers to provide them with a single place to find helpful, useful, and teacher-tested materials and ideas to help them have a more successful first year. This does not only apply to first-year teachers, it can be for anyone really, but If you have any resources or tip/tricks to help these teachers out, please feel free to visit my wikispace and add to it. Productivity Tools
Productivity tools are designed to help people do tasks easier than before. These tools along with other Web 2.0 tools “offer classroom teachers the potential for effective strategies” (Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p.105). I explored Google Drive: Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, and Google Forms as well as Planboard and Piktochart. Check out the slides below to get the fast facts about these great tools!
Google Drive
Google Drive allows you to create, access, share, and collaborate in a whole new way! Within Google Drive, it offers many different tools including Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, and Google Forms. The possibilities are endless. In my classes, I plan on using Google Drive to increase productivity and collaboration with students. Through Google Docs, students no longer have to struggle with waiting on other classmates to type their portion or each student writing a section and then compiling it all together and the essay doesn’t flow. This doesn’t just stop with essays or collaborative papers, you can even have students make presentations in Google Slides, collect and analyze data and information in Google Sheets, and teachers can informally survey their students about their content using Google Forms. Google Drive tools can also help students who struggle with their grammar skills such as a low-level learner or an ELL student because it provides spelling and grammar checks. When trying to determine assignments for students, teachers should reference the Pedagogy Wheel to determine what skills that the students will be using. Using Google Docs falls under the remember and understand category. This allows students to improve their recall of facts and be able to locate information. Personally, I look at Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Pedagogy Wheel to give the students a variety of ways to show what they know and at different levels.
Planboard
As teachers, it is essential to be able to see the big picture in where you are going with your lessons. One productivity tool that I found to help with this is Planboard. Planboard is an online lesson planner. With this lesson planner, teachers can easily organize their lessons, attach content standards, assignments/notes, and even share lessons with other teachers and administrators. When you have a change in plans, it is easy to move the assignment electronically to a different day without having to see all of the arrows that you would usually see on handwritten lesson plans. This also helps with planning each year because you can use the same schedule each school year and make tweaks instead of reinventing your lessons every time. I know for me at least, I love using this because I can take it everywhere! Planboard has an app that you can download to your smartphone or tablet and edit your lessons on the go! If you aren’t using it, then you should be! It makes lesson planning easy and saves time, so you can focus on your students.
Piktochart
Piktochart is a great tool for teachers to use that allows students to create their own infographic on a specific topic. The purpose of Piktochart is to visually represent your information using graphics, charts, very little text, and data. Students who struggle with lots of writing can flourish during this assignments because it focuses on choosing images, charts, and topic buzz words. It also challenges your students to think critically about the topic. In my world history classes, I would have my students focus on a topic such as the effects of the bubonic plague or major players during World War II. Students are engaged and are using critical thinking skills about the topic. Students can share their finished product as well. An assignment using Pikochart uses higher order thinking skills and on the Pedagogy Wheel, it would fall into the create category. I highly recommend using this to engage students and it gives them a new way to interpret information. Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0 how-to for educators. United States: International Society for Technology in Education.
3 Comments
Social NetworkingTwitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram…. These are some of the many social networking sites that students, teachers, parents use/interact with in some capacity in their daily lives. But have you ever thought of the idea of incorporating social networking sites into your own professional development and classroom activities? With the increase of technology available, teachers and students should utilize these valuable resources. In Web 2.0: How-To for Educators, Michael Waiksnis explained, “I get to learn from teachers, administrators, college professors, and anyone else across the world. It is powerful” (M. Waiksnis, personal communication, June 2013 as cited in Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p.129). Not only is it powerful, it is a game-changer. Teachers can obtain professional development at the touch of their fingers or click of a mouse, which in itself has revolutionized the way teachers share ideas, collaborate, and work to improve student achievement. Personally, Twitter and Pinterest are the two social network sites that I use the most. Both of these sites helps teachers improve student achievement in the classroom and keeps teachers up to date with relevant information. Social Networking is just like it sounds, there to connect people, share ideas, learn new information. Twitter I am relatively new at using Twitter, but I can honestly say that I wish I would have started using it earlier. The accessibility of material, ideas, and information is limitless. As Tom Murray was quoted in Web 2.0: How-To for Educators “… educators from around the world take part in various conversations on Twitter…. These conversations have become an excellent way for educators to connect on relevant topics, share resources and best practices, all while challenging each other’s thinking” (T. Murray, personal communication, June 2013 as cited in Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p.61). Since using Twitter for my professional growth I have already found numerous articles and people to follow. I highly recommend you following Edutopia and TED-Ed on Twitter for their resources. Twitter gives you the opportunity to tailor your followers to what you want to learn or what your interests are. I have even found groups that hold online Q&A sessions for you to collaborate with others by using the same hashtag. Teachers can not only use this for professional development, but they can also incorporate it into the classroom by hosting their own Twitter chat sessions, classroom polls, homework alerts, and lesson backchannels (Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p. 60-61). This can enhance student engagement. Feel free to follow me @ms_greencvhs. Pinterest Pinterest is another social networking site that can help connect teachers. Teachers, like myself, can create boards that are related to specific topics and add pins to each board to be able to save them for later and share with others. You can also follow other people’s board to see their ideas. I have been using Pinterest for many years and love all of the activities, classroom management ideas, and networking I have done through the site. I have my boards divided by general teacher information and the subjects I teach. Pinterest and Twitter allow teachers to stop reinventing the wheel and actual focus on teaching the students while using activities or ideas that people have already proven successful. Virtual EnvironmentsAlong with using social networking sites to improve your teaching and engaging your students, another tool you can incorporate into your classroom is virtual environments. “Teachers are using virtual environments in a wide variety of ways to support learning outcomes” (Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p.177). By allowing students to engage in this type of activity gives them the opportunity to put them into the action and have them make decisions based on what they have learned in class. Virtual environments are “designed to engage minds, promote learning, and encourage creative thinking” (Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p.177). The skills that they acquire in these games are not just relevant to the classroom, but also real life. iCivics In honor of Constitution Week, I explored iCIvics with my students in class. On this website, students engage in multiple games that test their knowledge of government rules and procedures, amendments, and the judicial court just to name a few. Students make real life decisions through the games and based on their choices that games have multiple outcomes and consequences for their actions. This teaches the students the material, but also skills that they can use outside the classroom. iCivics does not just provide games for students to play but also includes free resources, tools, and information for teachers to use. As a teacher, you can create an iCivics account and establish virtual classrooms where you can track student progress and manage discussion boards. Sid Meier’s Civilization V Civilization V is an in-depth virtual environment that gives students the ability to rule an empire starting from the ground up. In this game, students portray important historical figures in world history- depending on what version of Civilization you are playing, it will determine who they have to choose from. Once they have selected their leader then they start at the very beginning of the civilization with transforming hunter-gathers to an actual settlement to a civilization and eventually an empire. Through the game, students will make decisions on whether or not they should go to war with groups, explore new land, improve technologies, adopt new religions, among the many options students have when they are developing an empire. As they grow and expand their empire they are able to see more of the world and other civilizations that are around them that they interact with. This virtual environment can be both multi-player and single. In the classroom, teachers can put all of the students in their own empire and see how the student interact with each other in the game. Students will take on the different leader roles, but make their own decision based on what they think would be best for their civilization. I use this game to help students improve their decision-making skills and I have the students compare/contrast their own decisions in their civilization with what actually happened with their leader. This deepens the meaning of the game and has them critically think about the decisions they are making. My students get excited about the game and looking forward to competing with their classmates in this virtual environment. The Great Digital DivideThe digital divide separates students from a variety of five dimensions: racism, sexism, classism, linguistics, and ableism that can create a gap between their ability and accessibility to technology (Gorski, 2005, p.7). This divide is not exclusive to one type of school or area, it may be less certain places, but it affects everyone in some way or another. I can see the digital divide in my own school district, but they are slowly improving our digital divide as evidence shows that in our school improvement plan and the information provided by the county. We currently have one school in our district participating in 1:1 with laptops, but the other schools’ in the district like my school have a variety of ways of dealing with the issue. We are working on utilizing and updating our programs and hardware that we currently have and looking to acquire more computers, iPads, and laptops. In our district, we are providing students and parents with information regarding cheaper internet to make it more affordable to them and improve their access to technology at home. While this issue is not a huge concern for my school particularly, it is for other schools in the county who have more low-income families. I currently teach students who have limited access to computers and the internet at home. Despite these challenges, I still incorporate technology into my lessons and assignments to teach the students these value skills. In order to meet the needs of my students, I provide students will ample class time to complete assignments, I am available before/after school, and students can come in during their lunches to help. As Gorski’s article mentions, teachers can also make sure that when they use technology in their classroom it is to support/enhance student achievement and all students have access to the technology (Gorski, 2005, p.40). Districts need to ensure that teachers understand the way that the digital gap can be formed and techniques to help overcome this in their own classroom. I firmly believe that our school district is working towards embracing the digital age and shrinking the divide so all students have equal opportunity.
Gorski, P. (2005). Education equity and the digital divide. AACE Journal, 13(1), 3-45. Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0 how-to for educators. United States: International Society for Technology in Education. Blogging in the classroom is a new concept for me and something that I can already tell benefits the students in my classroom. Now, I haven’t started a blog just yet, but I did host my first online discussion post. I was extremely impressed with the effort that students put into the work. From the Web 2.0: How-To For Educators, students feed off of the idea that their work now has an audience and are more motivated to complete their assignments and complete them to their full potential (A. Hogan, personal communication, June 2013 as cited in Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p.43). I can see the importance of this from work my students presented in the discussion. I plan on using an actual blog for our next GeoPolitics league. If you would like to learn more about the GeoPoliticis leagues, visit my previous post to gather more information. For people who are first starting out with using blogs in the classroom like me, you need to first decide on the platform on which your blogs will take place. This can be through Weebly or Blogger. After the platform, you need to find a topic that they students can be interested in. I plan on using their GeoPolitics game as the topic for their blogging. Each week students will need to blog about their countries that they have in their league. They will need to report on how the countries are doing, what type of news stories are occurring, how this impacts the country, and what the student's thoughts are on what occurrences they have. This allows students to have open-ended responses that give them more ownership of the countries they have in the league and allows them to make educated decisions when it comes to trading day. Students will also need to respond to peer’s post. In their responses, students will need to address the topic of the student covered, explain their opinion on the topic, their thoughts, they can provide additional information or note the author’s strengths in the articles. Students not only have an audience of their classmates, but they also will have other people who look up current events from these countries or just people on the web. Students will be graded with the below rubric that outline the requirements for the assignment. I focused on three different areas with the rubric, content and ideas, writing quality, and student comments. Feel free to download the rubric and use it in your own classroom. I believe students will be engaged with the game even more and be able to develop their writing and collaboration skills through the blog. If you are like me, trying to incorporate blogging into your classroom, I highly recommend you visiting Blogging in the 21st-Century Classroom and How to Get Started Blogging in the Classroom. Both of these websites provided insight to assist in developing my own classroom blog and can definitely help you too. “How to Get Started Blogging in the Classroom” outlines steps on how to setup and incorporate blogs in the classroom to increase student engagement. As the website explains, blogs allow students to “write in their own voice, speak their minds, and ultimately express their opinions in a welcoming environment.” Students now can explain their viewpoint and get feedback and commentary on the same topic from not only their peers but other people outside of the classroom. Teaching students how to communicate their opinion and prove their point is a skill not just for the classroom, but also for life. The article continues to explain how students should begin their blog, offers some advice on how to improve student blogs, and additional resources for blogging. “Blogging in the 21st- Century Classroom” explains how blogging can improve student writing and critical thinking skills. The author states that her students find “homework less agonizingly painful.” This website is a great testimony for teachers and provides some insight into blogging from a teacher who has utilized this Web 2.0 tool in her own classroom. Both websites provide useful information for anyone who is looking to start blogging in their classroom. Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0 how-to for educators. United States: International Society for Technology in Education. "If students are to achieve their full potential, they must have opportunities to engage and develop a much richer set of skills... While there is still a need for more empirical evidence that these factors can be taught as transferable competencies across situations, there are a wide range of promising program and approaches" (Schechtman, DeBarger, Dornsife, Rosier, & Yarnell, 2013 as cited in Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p.8).
In the field of teaching, teachers ultimately feel accomplished when students are able to “achieve their full potential” (Schechtman, DeBarger, Dornsife, Rosier, & Yarnell, 2013 as cited in Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p.8). This quote explains that teachers need to provide opportunities for students’ aptitude to be reached. I firmly believe the word potential is a dangerous word. For instance in science, potential energy just sits there like a ball on a hill until something comes along and pushes it. Then this causes an action on the ball. Without the action being performed on the ball, it will just sit there. Students are the ball, and the teacher is the action. Students will sit there until the teacher comes along to motivate the student, provide opportunities to engage them in their learning- their education. Our 21st Century classroom with our 21st-century learners have access to more than ever before. Teachers need to realize the capability of these students and show the students that they can achieve it. Teachers need to appeal to these students through tools and technology that will interest them. Teachers have an almost limitless supply of resources for students to use and have access available to them. In my own classroom, I have definitely seen student engagement increase since incorporating more technology in the classroom. I use a variety of tools that are online. One of my students’ favorite tools is FanGeopolitics. FanGeopolitics tracks current events in countries around the world just as someone would in a fantasy football league. The site allows students to research countries and prepare for a draft to pick their countries for the league. Teams can earn points for their countries’ current events mentioned in the news, additional points for positive current events, or negative points for negative current events. It is completely customizable to fit the needs of your classroom. My students actually come to class talking about what is going on in their countries and enjoy writing discussion posts on the current events. My students now use current events in their everyday conversations and they stay up with what is happening in their countries, so they can be prepared for when we have trade days. Another technology tool that I use in the classroom is called Canvas. This learning management system has increased student engagement by creating a space where students are in charge of their own education. In my classes, students have taken more ownership in their work, keeping up with assignments, communicating better, and receive feedback more quickly. All in all, this program is a win-win for teachers and students. My students engage in discussions on the platform that everyone can see. This platform is relatively new to me, as my school district just adopted it and I just recently hosted my first discussion on it. With anything, there is always room for improvement. When my students commented, they were very basic statements noting that they agreed or did not and maybe a sentence about the topic. I am already making notes for the next discussion since reading Web 2.0: How-To For Educators. The book takes an excerpt from Linda Yollis who explains how she teaches students how to comment on blogs. In the description, she explains that students need to “add something to the comment conversation” (Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p.35). They also need to add new information, note the writer’s strengths, make a connection, share a story that relates, and/or foster a conversation from this. A simple comment that says, nice job- keep it up, will not suffice when you are trying to push students to do their best. A more recent Web 2.0 tool is TED-Ed. This website has premade online lessons for teachers to use in their classroom, or teachers can create their own to share. The website takes videos from YouTube and incorporates them in the Ted-Ed platform. After that, teachers can add discussion questions, multiple choice questions, or short answers to the platform to have students complete after watching the videos. When I use these in the classroom, the students are engaged because they want to be prepared to answer the questions at the end of the video. “The limitations of traditional tools have made the process complex, slow, and less than elegant” (Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p.33). As a growing educator who wants to see students achieve their full capacity, I constantly scour the internet and other resources looking for new tools. I am currently looking into using Glogster and Evernote in my classroom. These tools seem to allow students to express themselves in different ways and provide support for the students, especially in note taking with Evernote. This tool, in particular, helps students with “organizing their notes and information” and they can even download the program application on their smartphone/laptop to have whenever they need it (Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p.270). Another tool that I am interested in learning more about is Museum Box. This tool sounds excellent for a history classroom where students can “organize and categorize information around people, places, and things” (Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p.286). Through utilizing Museum Box in my classroom, students will be able to research in-depth information on a topic, compare and contrast the cubes, and reach higher order thinking. Web 2.0 tools most certainly need to be incorporated into the classroom, but it needs to be done in a way that supplements learning and student engagement. These tools like the ones I’ve mentioned in this post help students engage in their education and provide opportunities for students with diverse needs to do the same on a variety of platforms. As our technology continues to advance and make its way into our classrooms more and more, teachers need to start discovering and utilizing these tools in their classroom now to change student potential from being a ball sitting on a hill waiting, to a student who is going to reach their full potential with the action from teacher opportunity in the classroom. Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0 how-to for educators. United States: International Society for Technology in Education. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2024
Categories |