Entries Tagged 'Wiki' ↓

I started out searching for how writing is taught so that in the future I might be a better commenter. I found some wonderful resources and I’m going to share them here before they disappear into bookmark oblivion.

The first is from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory and is called 6+ 1 Trait Writing.

The 6+1 Trait Writing framework is a powerful way to learn and use a common language to refer to characteristics of writing as well as create a common vision of what ‘good’ writing looks like. Teachers and students can use the 6+1 Trait model to pinpoint areas of strength and weakness as they continue to focus on improved writing.

There are lesson plans, assessment, prompts and more. There is more on this at The Writing Fix and at eMints which has a huge list of links that even include classroom posters you can print out.

The next treasure is The Scribe Initiative which is a wiki of the San Antonio School system dedicated to digital storytelling. There is an incredible wealth of resources here including links to open source software for editing audio, tutorials for using MovieMaker and PhotoStory, sources for images and sounds and much more. If you want to take your student’s writing digital this is a great place to start.

“How do I know what I think until I see what I say? ”
E. M. Forster

Blogs and wikis are simply webpages. They can be created easily without any knowledge of code.

Wiki’s are webpages that can be edited by a group of people. They can be public and have little control other than the monitoring and constant updating by an interested group of people (like Wikipedia) or they can be utilized by a smaller group with more control over who can edit and who can simply view.

Blogs are a series of written posts that are displayed in order of last written, first displayed. They are given “tags” which allow them to be found by others who are searching on a subject that matches the tags. Blogs can also be very public with as little or as much control over who takes part in the conversation as the blog owner wishes.

Where collaboration in a wiki takes place by people adding their pieces or sections and creating a “whole” out of those pieces; collaboration on a blog happens through the continuing conversations and the addition of links to other blogs that make up our own online “sphere of influence”.

These web tools allow us to easily create web content and become online learning communities. Combining these with feed readers so that we can build a subscription base to the changing content that interests us, we can create content, keep up with content created by others, take part in a continuing dialogue with multiple authors, track changes on a wiki page and more.

There are resources and handouts to help use the blogs and wikis that are on the server here at school but you can also use Blogger and free wikis such as PBwiki.

You will find document and presentation resources here and videos here.

To sign up for a an account on the wiki go here. Click create an account in the upper right corner and then click create an account on the login page. Follow the instructions.

We will cover this material in class but you can come back here at anytime and look back over material or check for updates.

The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County has set up a blog called Learning 2.0. This blog contains a list of links containing 23 learning 2.0 things. The list is spread over a nine week period and contains links and tutorials to help you learn about blogging, Flickr, rss feeds and feedreaders, online image generators, library blogs, tagging and del.icio.us, technorati, wikis, online productivity sites, YouTube, and some sites for finding podcasts. The blog targets librarians but anyone who would like to get a “big picture” kind of tour, would find this a great starting place. If you follow the list of 23 things the way it is presented you will start your own blog and as you go through the rest of the list you will post on what you are learning.

If you go to their site make sure you check out the 7 and 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners presentation - it’s a wonderful presentation and the mission statement of the website is “Expanding Minds, Empowering Individuals, and Enriching the Community. You don’t have to take nine weeks to go through the list, but it is a great way to break down the pieces and give yourself a little time to reflect and play with what you learn. I love the way it is broken down and plan to learn from their example when I take some of these tools to my own campus. Thanks to them for doing such a great job! Thanks to Off the Shelf blog for pointing me to this great resource!

If you are confused about all this talk about web 2.0 or just want to let out your “inner geek” click over to this website and join in the fun.