Conference for Illinois Teachers of English (C.I.T.E.)

I spoke Friday at Illinois State University where the Conference for Illinois Teachers of English (CITE) was being held. I was there to talk about and demonstrate wikis…which is one of my favorite topics. I had a great group of Illinois teachers! They were especially kind when I logged myself out of my wikispaces account and couldn’t log myself back in!!! I wanted to show them how easy getting and managing an account can be and then, humph!! it backfired. I don’t know what I did wrong, but somehow, I unwittingly sent a request to wikispaces for a new password. Well, I just punted and the group was great at receiving!!

 If you are interested in building your own wiki, take a look at what I created for my English teachers. Feel free to copy and paste anything you see there, and drop me a line. Use the “Notify Me” file tab or leave a comment here. My Teaching Wiki is a project I undertook as a service to teachers. I become totally engaged in building my wiki and adding various web tools to make it as engaging for my readers as it is for me in the creation process. My Teaching Wiki is a tool to help you understand the simple processes to creating your own interactive website for teaching in whatever content area you find yourself.

 

A Notion Coming to Fruition: Uniting Blogs, Wikis and Academia

Well, if you read a post or two previous, you know that I am “torn between two lovers…” wikis and blogging. Wikispaces, where I host “My Teaching Wiki” has rolled out an integration system that allows the two to become united for what I think could be a very beneficial union. I am an educator and currently working in the area of professional development. The integration of two tech tools really makes the process of instruction so much the easier. The pages are more manageable, the result is more dynamic, and the volume of participation and collaboration creates a more conducive environment for differentiating instruction, which happens to be a focus in my work. This integration is nothing new…if you followed my link, you see that it was created a couple of years ago!!  The challenge for wikispaces is this…they currently have only two blog sites that integrate with their website.

In my appreciation for wikis, I conduct workshops, or rather guided tours through Wikipedia. My goal is to get teachers more comfortable with a website that their students know better than they do and to show that in weakness exists teaching opportunities. Seems like I’m not alone. Researchers at the University of California are using Wikipedia to design software that can rate the credibility of references that are posted. It seems that the establishment of credibility is based more on a numerics rather than on actual reading, but what I find interesting is that an online source that some educators refuse to even recognize, other educators are investing extensive time and talent in moving ahead and improving on what technology offers. Kudos!!

Creating Authentic Learning in a Wiki

I really like wikis. That said, I like them because I see educational potential in their use by teachers and students. I am in the midst of a discussion, well, maybe that is too strong a word, perhaps conversation is more apt…about whether wikis really provide a learning environment and offer learning opportunities or whether they are merely repositiories of information and /or knowledge. Of course they are both–learners need one to have the other. Learners need information and/or knowledge to converge with experience in order to create new knowledge, extend existing knowledge and reinforce or dismiss notions or  assumptions.

But to develop wikis in a way that scaffolds constructivist thought and social interaction (aka networking) requires time and creativity. Sure, it’s easy to ask learners to post to a wiki just to make it look like your learners use wikis. But using wikis and learning from wikis is not the same concept. To make the wiki work from a the constructivist view is to require anticipation and thereafter, reflection. In that paradigm of working, wiki participants are truly  collaborating rather than idependently working on a shared site. That’s what makes wikis work. 

One way to illustrate such types of learning is to use Wikipedia or other wikis to develop critical literacy. Twice this week, I have read in a blog or listened to a podcast that outlines how teachers are using their distrust of Wikipedia to build critical reading skills. Christopher Dawson points out ways to challenge students to become critical readers by identifing inconsistencies or contradictions within Wikipedia entries or by culling the references and discussions to further research accuracy, timeliness, credibility, etc.  Dawson points out that many of today’s views regarding Wikipedia are reminiscent of our own teachers’ views of World Book and other encyclopedias, if not in their credibility, in the depth of their content.

Like any other instructional tool, a wiki is only as strong as designer of its use. If a teacher sees it as a repository and accepts the work assigned using it as just that, a repository it will be. However, if a teacher’s expecations require full familiarity and use of the discussion pages and embedding tools, the wiki can be far more than a repositiory; it can become a dynamic intellectual and cultural tool that shapes not only the creators, but also the sometime voyeur.

Notions and Assessment.538 #3

Wow! What a week! Technogized by the FOE virtual conference…postings and presentations, acquainting myself with educators who are totally immersed in educational technology….drawing on their energy and knowledge to boost my own.

Through FOE, I became part of an active dialogue regarding the learning that goes on in a wiki…or whether learning occurs in a wiki! How serendipitous for me since wikis are the focus of my summer energy. I am developing a hybrid professional development workshop that incorporates f2f, a course management system and a wiki for the purpose of bringing middle and high school teachers into the Web 2.0 fold. When I get my wiki all done, I’ll post and link it through this blog and get some feedback.

And, I’ve been reading…Assessing Online Learning. Got to chapter 4, “Online Collaborative Assessment: Unpacking Process and Product”and was reminded of a series of workshop trainings I received as a high school teacher based on the Richard Stiggins model. I really bought into his stance regarding process and product, formative and summative assessments, and the difference between assessments for learning and assessments of learning. During our training and the subsequent development of an informal study I conducted with my 11th grade students, we “unpacked” the Illinois Learning Standards as they applied to reading in developing a standards based curriculum focused on the end product. The whole process is much like like Wiggins’ Backward by Design and frankly, very amenable to development on wikis. Are you hearing the theme?

But the week wasn’t over and I was far from finished in connecting wikis with what I read. My teaching background you picked up from the previous paragraph is English–which to me is all about communication…and so I am focused on reading and writing and listening and speaking. That’s why I am so confident the wiki can help teachers help kids to be come better readers, which is really all about thinking. And now I’m back to Assessing Online Learning again, chapter five: Using Virtual Learning Models to Enhance and Assess Students’ Critical Thinking and Writing Skills. Wikis are all about communication: reading and talking with others in order to make meaning and then communicating that meaning with others to refine, define, extend, create more meaning that again gets communicated and sifted through the thought processes of another to go the gamut again.

These texts I’ve referenced: written, spoken, virtual, all come full circle to what is going on as I write…I am reconstructing, if very briefly, the texts that have engaged me this week; I am constructing meaning as I connect one to the other through reflective and cognitive thought, questioning their origins and relationships, and now, I am communicating those thoughts to you, looking for someone to challenge and extend my thoughts in an intellectual and fun exchange.

Has anyone ever actually had a learning experience in a wiki? Has anyone ever had a learning experience in a blog? Is it possible to have an experience and not learn? I pose those as rhetorical questions, but you can chew on them if you like and if you are further moved, let me know what your notions are about such theoretical meanderings.

There is no magic potion. 438 Post #2

I am feeling so overwhelmed today! I have started a new blog  and wishing I would have stayed on track with the original; I am incorporating graduate class assignments with the creation of new materials for fall technonlogy workshops and…on top of thatl, I am having operational challenges with technology that are making my head swell into a throbbing bulbous annoyance rather than the swiftly streaming sensory player I appreciate and respect. 

Escape…I’m off  to the “Cool Cat” teacher blog for some insight and I find another conference I want to attend, but what, in June–just days away.  And then I slow down…yes slow down and reread. It’s an online conference  with our own, Dr. Cheri Toledo as a presenter and  I’m already registered. As a matter of fact, in the time I linked the conference registration to this page, I received confirmation of participation and list of archived conferences with topics near and dear to my heart, including connectivism. Already, the throbbing bulbous appurtenance atop my shoulder is beginning to feel once again like an essential part and not a hiderance.

Yet another item on the Cool Cat page that inspired me was a link to Virtual Worlds in Education wiki . I am working on a distance learning project that will serve as a resource to “digital immigrants”  as they teach digital natives about creating wiki spaces for learning. Wow!! what a template the Horizon Project Virtual Wiki offers!

I am feeling less stressed. My morning started with James Lang’s “A Brain and A Book” arguing whether we need to accomodate teaching to the needs of the digital native or whether there is value in the past and the mediums by which we (the immigrants) learned and formed communities. His notions were in response to Marc Prensky’s Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants , a text admonishing those of us from a certain generation to quit whining and “Just do it!” –take the leap of faith into the world of technology.

As I continued to read through blogs and logs, emails and assignment rubrics, I felt overwhelmed by what I don’t know and what I don’t know how to do. Technology and my own personality have a way of teaming up on me. I often blame technology for speeding me up, instilling impatience, and adding to my personal list of what I could or should do, and so now, I am ready to slow down and accept for a few hours the fact that the more I learn about technology, the more I learn I don’t know. My day to day tasks are small in the ripples of real time and not worth the pain of a throbbing headache.

The throbbing is gone; I am in a state John Keats called “Negative Capability”–“when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” I am content, for the remainder of the day, to not strive for SBR as a foundation for motivation or reasoning. I will read and enjoy these moments and hold the notions of others loosely in my mind.