Wiki fever

I am currently on a ship sailing to Aruba. I have taken a week off of school for this family reunion that I am at, which is exciting, but it also makes me very nervous to be gone from school--especially for the first full week of Semester Two. I started teaching Feminist Literature Quest and the beginning part of the semester is very note-heavy so I was particularly nervous to leave them. I knew I could not expect my sub, wonderful as he is, to figure out how to use the projector and present my power point presentations for the notes the students need. So, to manage my fear of leaving them without correct instruction, I created a blog for them and a wiki. On the wiki, I was able to post their notes in different sections. I showed the students before I left how to use the wiki and assigned them their homework of getting the notes from the wiki and the due dates for doing so. I can then update the wiki while I am gone and check the blog if they have questions on the notes. I can then monitor their questions from this remote access site. Of course, they can also leave questions on the wiki and via email. It sets me at ease to do this and allows me to relax and enjoy this vacation! Technology is so great!

A New Thing: Squidoo

This week I learned about Sguidoo in one of my graduate school classes where you can have your own web page on whatever you want.

* http://www.squidoo.com

There are three levels:
* g--everyone can look at it
* R--restricted
* X--sign in

General facts about Squidoo
* live 2006
* free
* Dec 2007 Google will compete with squidoo
* no spam
* can use different widgets
* can add modules (building blocks) to your lens (lens is what they call a page)
* you add tags on it for people to find it--or not
* can have an RSS feed, email that you can add to the lens
* point people to the correct place
* can track statistics of who visits squidoo site

British teachers voice concerns about plagiarism

I thought this was an interesting article about plagiarism on BBC world news:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7194772.stm

The article opens with this quote:
"The 58% of 278 teachers who identified it as a problem said they thought 25% of work returned by pupils included material copied from internet sites." I wonder what the statistics would be for teachers in St. Paul.

Podcasting

I thought this was a helpful article about podcasting:

http://radio.about.com/od/podcastin1/a/aa030805a.htm

I hope to learn how to podcast soon. I'd love to have a session walking us through it!

Blog update

It is exciting to see that students are now asking me to post certain things to our class blogs. Although the blog isn't used everyday, it is nice to know they do look to it for information, which also reminds me to update it. I post their major assignments on to the blog and it is a nice way to have them ask questions about the assignments on the blog--it is reassuring to know they really are thinking about the homework!

More wikis...

Yes, as you all know already, I am wiki obsessed. I have created two more wikis, one for me personally so I can keep my notes organized and centralized for graduate school and one for my AP Lit and Comp class. For AP Lit and Comp, we are just finishing reading Oedipus the King and were discussing the Oedipus Complex. I have information about Freud on powerpoint, but we ran out of time in class to go through it, so one of my students asked if I could add it to our class blog. I tried to figure this out, but I couldn't find a place to do this--so I created a wiki. I knew I would be able to add it to a wiki, so I set one up quickly while they were working on some questions on a poem related to Oedipus and when they were finished with their questions, I showed them how to use a wiki--on our awesome projector! Only two people in the class had used a wiki before so I walked them through the wiki process and also how to set one up themselves in case they wanted to create their own. It is really basic right now, but they can now view the powerpoint presentation on Freud whenever they have time. Also, it is great to have set up since second semester they have a group project for Crime and Punishment. Since we all know everyone is so busy, I hope they will use this wiki to work online on their projects and hopefully this will enable them to collaborate better. I showed them one of my other wikis as well so they can see the potential of all that the wiki can do. We'll see how it goes.

Another challenge

I don't know if anybody else is having this problem, but I haven't been able to connect to bloglines for a couple of days. I feel like I am behind on reading everyone else's blogs. I don't know why I cannot connect to it. I have tried at school and at home. Any thoughts anybody?

Another Wiki

I created another wiki for a colleague and me who are writing a grant together. It has been a fantastic tool! My colleague and friend is also a part of two of the other wikis I have created, but didn't get interested in them. For this project though, she has become as obessed with the wiki as I was this fall. It is like a shiny new toy on Christmas morning. It has been exciting for me to have actually influenced someone else into using this new technology of their own accord--as well as to be able to collaborate using technology. Third time's the charm. :)

Starting the New Year Out Right

I prepared a keynote presentation for my ninth graders for the Wednesday we returned from break--two actually, one on August Wilson and one on drama. I also found an interesting video to watch on United Streaming, or Discovery Streaming (you know what I mean) on August Wilson that was 22 minutes long. I set up the projector first thing when I got to school and thankfully there were no hidden obstacles to overcome this time; Wednesday's lesson was so smooth! Practice makes perfect.