What is a Wiki?

In the latest post by Sue Waters in the edublogger, Sue has asked for feedback from the readers regarding wikis.  Here are her questions and below them is my response.

1. How do you explain to people what a wiki is?
2. Reasons why you use wikis
3. How you use a wiki for professional learning or with your students?
4. Examples of your favourite wikis
5. Questions you always wanted answered about wikis

A wiki in simple terms is a web page that can be edited easily by one person or by many. It can be used as for a collection of resources, but its most powerful use is for collaborative purposes, where members can work in virtual teams to achieve a site full of rich material that can include text, links, images, video, podcasts and other multimedia etc.

My first use of wikis was to keep all the online resources that I have found in one easily accessbile website. However, since then I have used wikis with global staff and students. The flatclassroom projects use wikis for the collection of materials from the virtual global student teams. The netgened project was  a fabulous project that has just finished.

The flatclassroom and digiteen projects are work in progress at the moment and their wikis can be seen from the preceeding links.  Look at this  example of a great student developed wiki page for the netgened project.

Our grade 3-7 students are involved in the es1001tales es1001tales.wikispaces.com and the ms1001tales where students are grouped together with two other schools from two other countries. They each write astory, place it on the shared wiki and their group members read it, provide feedback and positive ideas for improvement. After two more drafts their work is complete, images are added etc. In 2008, my year 9/10 students answered questions for Susie Corbett’s USA students so that they could accurately complete travel posters for Australia. Here is her final comments on the wiki, once the project was completed:-

“Thanks to all you people who contributed to this wiki, especially you Aussies, you are AWESOME! We learnt much about you and your country. Collaborative tools such as  wikis offer a way to travel and communicate beyond backyards without even leaving the classroom. This was a whole lot more fun than researching with an encyclopedia!”

Grade 4 and 5 added a podcast to globalexplorers

My year 8 students are the sounding board for a project on Africa  I am also starting wikis for each of my subject areas as resource collections initially. I love the work that Vicki Davis does with eportfolios and her students. I tend to use blogs as e-portfolis, but Vicki uses wikis.My students have had to learn how to tag, add discussions, write in the history tab etc. Wiki wars have occurred and it has been a steep learning curve.

I would love to know how to add RSS feeds from delicious and diigo.

The Tsunami changed everything!

This was one of the headings on a slide presented by  Senior Associate Dean for Journalism Richard J. Roth  from the Northwestern University in Qatar. This slide was part of the presentation on “Citizen Journalism”, for the keynote address for the current flatclassroom project.

Two of my students were able to remain back at school on Thursday afternoon this week, to watch the presentation from Qatar Academy, Doha, Qatar via skype’s videoconferencing. As I have downloaded the latest version of skype and as I had period 6 free, I was able to test the system before 3:30pm and get it all working on my laptop -fortunately, as Julie Lindsay and I both had minor technical problems. Skype required me to use a usb microphone, but as I had a headset on, so a quick changeover was made.

I had booked the library and the interactive white board so that we had a ‘big screen’. However, when we logged on there, skype had not been downloaded after the new ghosting. Urgh!! So, the three of us gathered around my laptop screen and with clear video and audio (we only dropped out once) we were able to feel part of the audience.

The keynote was a thought provoking insight into the current state od and future of journalism, with so many people having m-technology in their pockets now:- mobile phones, flip videos, digital cameras  etc Hence the caption “Really the Tsunami changed everything!” Since then so many large world wide incidents and events are captured first by the ordinary person in the street and relayed to the newspapers, magazines, TV stations etc. Some TV stations and newspapers have set up video sites for local communities to upload videos. Others have set up blogs and community citizens add their own news – local sports events, a car accident, community event etc. Another interesting event was an example of a newspaper who gave out 400 odd  free flip video cameras to local citizens to capture the news and upload onto an online site.

Many pertinent questions were fired from Qatar Academy students and these were honestly and well answered. How proud we were to be part of this wonderful event. Listen to the podcast of this keynote address.

My routine has just gone kapoot!!

 

This morning, I was awoken by my husband shaking me  asking me what time I needed to get up on my first morning back in Australia. (I had already slept in by an hour.) The routine that had been developed over the last week has been broken. 

 5am Prayers from the local mosque would awaken me in Doha, Qatar

5:30am Arise and get organized for the day

7:20am School would start at the Qatar Academy, or 8:00am the flatclassroomconference would commence .

School day, tours or conference sessions filled in the day until 2:20pm (the end of school) or up to 8:00 pm for conference sessions.

My students are again a monoculture compared with the many varied nationalities, creeds and cultures of the last week.

The accents are all the same, except for those of us who went to Qatar and occasionally slip into the Texas or Alberta accent without thinking. I had to listen so intently to the many and varied accents of staff and students to ensure I understood what was said and responded appropriately.

The dress is entirely Western again – gone are the  thobes , Ghutra and Igal of the Qatari and Arabic men, the abaya and hijab of the Islamicwomen , and the more traditional dress  of the women from Pakistan. Back are the short skirts, singlet tops and shorts, and our school uniform.

Summer was replaced by winter and we then returned to a scorching Australian summer.

Gone is the routine but the girls and I have come home with henna, lifelong memories and the desire to continue to make our classroom flat.

Henna on a Qatari student

The student summit and leaders

Cross posted at ejourneys with technokids

Why I love skype!

When I suggested my top ten web2.0 sites for 2007, skype was one of them. I had experienced using this software with my two sons who live in London and have since used it at school for videoconferencing purposes with NZ Chrissy and Gail Casey when she was teaching ESL in Korea. Whilst it was snowing in Korea, we had some sound difficulties but skype are working on improving sound quality all the time.

Since then I have used it for

• discussion purposes with teachers on collaborative global projects
• professional development (Quest Atlantis uses this)
• interviews and surveys – both staff and students
• involving teachers from other countries teaching my classes etc.
• sharing advice, clarifying issues etc
• guest speakers for night classes
• live demonstrations for parent information sessions
• conference calls
• See what allanahk, a primary school teacher in NZ has achieved with video skype chats.

 Here are 10 facts you may need to know:-

1. Skype is VOIP (voice over internet protocol) and its use is free if it is calls are made computer to computer.
2. Equipment: skype  software (download from www.skype.com) , headset with microphone, or desktop mic, a webcamera (for videoconferencing), IWB or datashow for projecting the video (if for classroom use), user names (equivalent of phone numbers) of contact people
3. User friendly, quick loading (sometimes falls over but getting more reliable all the time)
4. Neat search facility to add other users to contact list
5. Chat or audio can take place. It is polite to send a request message via chat first, to ensure that person you are contacting is not in class or otherwise engaged. (My laptop has embarrassed me on several occasions by ringing, in class)
6. Conference calls: both audio and chat. Currently, videoconferencing can only be used between two users. The video aspect cuts out after a third person enters the conversation.
7. Chats can be saved with appropriate title, by bookmarking. Goto chats>bookmarked chats and enter a title whilst in skype conversation) or goto recent chats and it tends to save automatically, but with a non categorised title.
8. Can buy credit to ring landlines locally, domestically, overseas (extremely cheap overseas calls)
9. Constantly requesting feedback as to quality of calls, and working on improving the service. (Sometimes line quality is not high, delays but these are getting less over time.)
10. Number of users is restricted to, I think, 10 and then a bridge phone number must be given.

Hint: If using it for the first time, experiment with a friend or colleague after work hours, to ensure you know how it works before trying it in a 3way (or more) chat or videoconference setting.

Another interesting post on “Why I love skype!”

A classroom without walls

I have experienced two more amazing events today. After spending most of last night researching cybersafety sites and collecting some wonderful reference points from my twitter colleagues re links, sites and online videos, I went to upload them onto the desktop in the lab which projects onto the datashow. However, our internet was down. A crazy 30 mins was spent trying to get it going again and trying to think of an alternative activity to fill in the double IT class of years 9/10. Fortunately, it came on eventually and students immediately went to their blogs. Comments had started to come in from US students, the Netherlands and our staff members. So, I ended up using none of my preplanned materials as students set about commenting back, researching those global student blogs and adding a clustrmap to their own blogs. Itwas a teachable moment that expanded for 90 mins with students activating their own learning. Even the most reluctant of readers were researching the blogs and then my students wanted to improve theirs.

The next was another powerful learning moment. Jeff Whipple who is active in helping set up the middle school 1001 flat tales project, kindly offered to demonstrate wikis to the grades 4-6 students. Jeff Whipple (read his blog about us) is from Canada, where the temp was -16 degC and the time was 10:00pm. In comparison, we were enjoying a 25 deg sunny day, 12:00pm timeslot and students were to go swimming at the local pool. Interesting conversations flowed, our link was excellent and the students thoroughly engaged, even seeing Jeff’s pet cat via the camera!!! Skype was our videoconferencing software.

Jeff used the SMART Technologies Bridgit IWB conferencing tool to allow our IWB access his laptop screen so we could see the wiki students will collaboratively work on. He gave them a bit of a discovery tour.  Various fascinated staff were also present, including our principal. Such amazing technology for a Canadian teacher to be teaching our Aussie students in real time, via his laptop.

Our principal told our local newspaper about the activity and they immediatley sent out a reporter and a photographer on a 30 min trip to our school (an almost unheard of event in the past.) Unfortunately Jeff had signed off skype so I urgently tried to contact him via twitter where I read his latest post. He soon skyped me back and waited up another 45 mins to allow himself to be photographed via our IWB with two young students talking to him.

An amazing day!!!!! Hope I can sleep tonight as it is all so exciting!!