Author: abendelow
-
Wikis over blogs?
Loved this post from Adam Clark: If Google Apps isn’t blocked [students] can use that resource but the way wikis allow you to keep track of page history and manage multiple levels of information is a compelling advantage……students could manage projects with blogs but I have found the simplicity of wiki edits is intuitive where…
-
Cool Web 2.0 tools for history class
Sometimes I wish I taught social studies. Especially when I see read-write web innovations like these: CommunityWalk: students and teachers can create and research user-produced maps–for virtual and in preparation of real field trips Footnote: an open archive of primary documents–some privately held, until now. Sort of a megaplex of historical society files. Too bad…
-
Pity that poor monster, the un-adapting older teacher
On a basic level, the hesitance to get wiki-with-it is natural. People fear what is foreign–it keeps species alive, etc. And unless he gets training in it, the un-adaptive older teacher will fear what he is ignorant of, what he has not himself positively experienced. And yet the tendency for older educators to feel threatened…
-
Digital natives are not that scary
They are just very different from the older adults in the school, whom the Pew Internet and American Life project call “digital immigrants.” These kids only know digital, and teachers who don’t teach digitally risk becoming less effective thereby. These “digital natives” are sometimes not existing in the same world as they’re teachers. They are…
-
How wikis facilitate 21st Century Literacy, pt.3
I am moved to reflect on this item that arrived today in my NCTE Inbox. It’s from this guy: Kent Williamson, NCTE Executive Director How Is Literacy for the 21st Century Different? Nearly two-thirds of the poll respondents indicated that their teaching methods had undergone marked changes reflecting new concepts of literacy. The most important…
-
"Wiki-fy" don't mean "wipe away"
The school that wants to use wikis is only using new means to the same goal: to more effectively get more students learning. Those of us who have been using them know that students seem engaged more in their learning. But the learning itself, the curricular components and theoretical principles, aims and standards, are not…
-
Reasons teachers should use wikis
Vicki Davis (2007) reminds us of some ways that wikis answer the educational demands of the present and can be integrated with best practices. Classrooms using wikis provide for: Authentic assessment–the broad knowledge base and complexity of the skills on display Project-based learning–this is where teachers can drive the digital native’s trains–they’re collaborating/conferring/considerding/compromising anyway (through…
-
New skin for the old ceremony
A discipline plan for teachers put out on curriki, a not for profit sharing site for teachers. The plan reminds me of my early days in the 80s at Fenwick and Mt. Carmel, when, as a lieutenant in the Catholic young men army of the Archdioscese of Chicago, I had occasion to run into the…
-
First, you feel afraid,
and it’s totally normal. Change is fearful. But it gives us a chance to exercise our courage when we face our fears and move on, graceful under the pressure of imminent destruction/damage.
The Wikiness 