LightintheWoods

As a requirement of the class that I am taking from Dean, my thoughts this past two weeks have been on collaboration. This is a reflection on my collaboration as it happened through this time frame.

Right off the bat Erin Dawson and I were sharing like minded direction during our elluminate session. We both wanted to create a wiki project on inclusion of technology in K-8 Science. Seemed like a great idea, but then it snowballed and evolved into elementarytech. This wiki demonstrates a broad spectrum of projects that infuse technology. We used mindmeister to brainstorm ideas and communicated mostly through email. I have heard the the quote from Alec Couros, “10 miles wide, 2 inches deep” and definitely applies to this wiki, we lacked direction. But I am still attached to it, I feel it has good potential and I intend to collect future lessons, links, units in this space. If anyone is interested, please come share with us. This is space that is ever growing.
Nicole Hofer created the Digital Citizen Ning group, I was familiar with Ning from my involvement with the digitalintern group and find it to be a neat platform to share and build community. I contributed a couple videos, but have intent to blog and develop this further. At the very least it is a good example of networking. I may use Ning to connect my students during this internship.

The neat part about the project with Dean was the opportunity to correspond with Jeff Utecht’s Class. Micheal, David and Matt created a great wetpaint wiki Web 2.0 for Newbies. I hopped on and began a Twitter in the Classroom page.

With application to the classroom floating in my mind I was lucky Damien Bariexca linked me to his class wiki. His reflection of his wiki experience is just what is needed for new teachers, like me.

But that is just a taste of the collaboration, it is happening instantaneously. Through everything, twitter and del.icio.us come to mind, but also through comments, reflections and discussion. The network is a grand thing.

In May and June of this year I took EADM 310 and EPYS 322 (Special Needs). I proposed to my instructors that I was getting into this tech stuff, and it would be a great experience to experiment with wiki’s. Was I ever right!

For anyone familiar with Ed Pysc 322, the project involves creating your own resource binder with various strategies, management techniques, and visual strategies for special needs students. Check it out here. Peers were handing 3 inch binders that they were claiming they would never look at again. Think of the trees! The resource I created will be useful in my teaching and act as a great starting point for when I do encounter a student with a special need that I want to research further. The prof was so interested in this method that she is going to suggest that the next class collaborates in creating a similar wiki rather than binders.

In the Ed Admin class, I chose the topic of educational cyber policy. I found all relevant information to be online and realized that the wiki was the best method to deliver the research I had in mind. Check it out here. This method allowed me not to link to direct references but also deliver video and related news on the subject that was at time less than a week old.

One of the key aspects that I missed out on in the process of creating these wiki’s was the collaboration, so I invite each of you to join my wiki spaces and contribute as you see fit.

This where I plug wikispaces.com. Easy to use, and ad free wiki space for educational use. How could you beat that? I should also add that without this video, this project would of been far more intimidating.

This blog by Vicki, does a good job of summarizing some of the points Will Richardson presents on wikis in his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.

I can not wait to use wiki’s in my classroom. The ease of use is phenomenal and it connects students directly with their peers for collaboration and meaningful learning. If anybody has any suggestions, or questions on wiki’s please leave me a note.