Having A Wiki Good Time.....

This week I was introduced to the concept of wikis and how they could be integrated into the classroom environment. After looking into several wiki tools that are available, I was quite impressed by Wikispaces. When exploring their site, I found many appealing features including the fact that educators can create free spaces that can be private. I also really like how user friendly this site was and how it offered video tutorials to show a new user how to create their own wiki space. Of all things we did this week, I was really excited by the prospect of creating a Wikispace for my U.S. history classes next year as a controlled environment outside of the classroom that will facilitate student collaboration.

In addition to learning and understanding how I might integrate the use of wikis into my teaching, I also think that photo sharing could be used in my classroom next year if I created a project where they had to document something in their lives in a way that forced them to “think like an historian” and maybe document aspects of their life, which would be part of history. Instead of telling a typical story with words, students could use images. Of the sites, I really thought that Flickr and Picasa and Picasa Web Albums were sites that were easy to understand and operate. One thing that I found to be really interesting in the Picasa and Picasa Web Albums was the way that users could easily add geo-tags to their photos so that they can remember exactly where they're from using Google Maps. I could see that being a neat story telling tool if, for example, my students were doing a photo project either on their hometown or even stories of historical events in their hometown. A map and picture would make the project likely more engaging and informative.

Blog.....Blog.....Blog......

Overall, this week I will not lie, I was a bit blogged out. It's not that I don't like the blog.....afterall, who would not want to blog? The big idea about blogging, in my opinion, is that it is an excellent facilitator for collaboration. The way to make it work the best is to slowly integrate it into your teaching and to know how to use it before having your students use it. All of the concentration this week on blogging really got me thinking about how I would integrate it into my teaching and I think that this is something that I would consider for next school year. I would, however, choose a blog like 21Classes, which is controlled by the educator and would allow me to post homework assignments and notes, while also monitoring student questions and blog responses. From the activities we did this week, I feel that I am more aware of options concerning blogging.