Wikis in Telecollaborative Projects: How 2.0

When I think of a wiki, I image it to be one great resource for teachers, students, and parents to look at when thinking about a telecollaborative project. Since the telecollaborative project is not something you could just meet up with someone and have coffee and discuss your plan; using a wiki will allows the users to organize and post their thoughts all in one place that can be accessed from anywhere with an Internet connection.

Teachers:

Can assess the students posts and also look at the history to see who and when changes were made. The teacher also has access to update, delete, and manage each pages information. The teacher could also pose questions to each group or students page in the discussion board to give them some type of feedback. The teacher (if so desired) also has the ability to hide particular pages from other users so only Susie could see the Group 1 project, and Billy could only see Group 2.

Students:

If the teacher split the class up to be partnered with someone from the other class, they could assign each group a wikipage to be in charge of. The students would be responsible for digitally communicating with their partner to determine what they would like to accomplish or see for each part of the project. Depending on the student's access to other pages (as set by the teacher) the student could comment on other groups work and give them helpful or insightful hints.

Parents:

The great thing about a wiki is parents (depending on the settings set by the teacher) the parent might only be able to view, or view and make comments. This way the parents can get involved with the telecollaborative projects but not be able to change the work their or other students have done. This way when some students say they have been doing "nothing" in class the parent can verify and have conversations about the project with the student as well.

How to change the settings:

As the teacher you are the Administrator/Creator of your wiki, so you have the ability to set what role you would like to give each student, parent, or other teacher. Here are some steps to help you:

• Log onto the wiki


• Click the users tab (near the top left)


• Find a student, parent, or other teacher name in the list of users


• To the right you have some drop down choices: Administrator (can do anything on the wiki), Editor (has the ability to edit the page and comment), Writer (only has access to write in the discussion board), Reader (can only read the page), and Page-Level Only (allows you to let them be one of the other choices but only for that page not the rest of the website).


• After you have selected a choice it automatically saves and you are done! :)

Below is a screenshot of what the settings page should look like:

Timetoast in Telecollaborative Projects: How 2.0

It has been a while since I posted about timetoast, so if you don't remember timetoast is a site where students can interactively create a timeline with pictures, links, and add descriptions.

I was thinking today that timetoast is a great tool by itself however since I spoke about the livebinders being able to link to different websites, wouldn't it be great if to link those two tools together! Instead of having the students write a blog (which is blocked by Baltimore County) the students can type out their feelings, questions, concerns, or revelations they have each day. As they update their timeline it will also reflect in their livebinders tab. This could be a great way to spark conversation between the schools, groups, or even a class discussion. Even though timetoast does not offer a discussion feature, however on livebinders they do offer a comment feature which comments on the whole binder not a specific section.

Timetoast could be a great tool to also share and monitor everyone classes progress. Below is a timeline for a project my students and I did this year (I made the timeline but next year will expect them to keep their own timeline).

If the students/teacher/project wanted the students to use a wiki as their main communication tool the students could embed the interactive timeline right on the wiki page.

Livebinders in Telecollaborative Projects: How 2.0

One of the ways I was thinking classes could use livebinders in the telecollaborative project would be to organize their information. This would be a great way to show students logical ways to group information where other people could easily follow their thoughts.

I was also thinking if you had your class doing the project in groups of 2 or 3, each group could have one big tab and put their information in subtabs. This way as the teacher you could look at a groups whole project without have to search too hard, the other classes in the project could follow every group individually, and the other teacher may find a new way to split up "jobs" of a project to ensure everyone was participating.

This Web 2.0 tool is a great way to share ideas without have a physical binder with you all the time. It is also a good way to get parents involved and encourage their students to become more culturally learners.

Here is a link that takes you to a wiki that is a "support" for livebinders. This site has categorized the binders made by people into different grade levels, subjects, or courses.

Here is a print screen of a neat livebinder titled: Mobile Apps for Education. It has categories to talk about different educational apps you can download for ipods.

Closer Look at Livebinders: How 2.0

I have been working more with Livebinders and have found out some great and some "glitches" that still need to be worked out.

Great things about Livebinders:

• Livebinders is a great way to organize and share information for students, teachers, or other professionals.
• It allows you to highlight websites, pictures, documents, videos, or even type text right into a tab.
• It also creates a "credits" section where it highlights all the links added, a thumbnail, and the date you added it to the binder.
• There is also a place where people can comment on sections of the binder and give feedback or suggestions, which makes it more collaborative where the creator can change and add onto the suggestions of others.
• You can download "Livebinder It" which is an easy way to add a website you like into your binder without have to go directly to livebinders, the tool gets added directly to your browser tool bar. If you have a delicious account you can directly import your bookmarks to livebinders.
• There are many ways to embed and share your binders with people!

"Glitches" I have found with Livebinders:

As I was creating my "subtabs"

• If I added a PDF in a subtab and then wanted to add another subtab the PDF covered up my options about the subtabs. - The only thing I found to get around this problem was to save my binder, go back to "my binders", click on the binder I was working in, then selected "edit menu" this then allowed me multiple options on each page.
• If you try to upload a Microsoft Office document it can only be seen and uploaded if you have Internet Explorer 8. If you use IE 6 or 7, Firefox, Safari, or Chrome you will be asked to download the document. - If you add it as a PDF it will show up in everything except for IE7 and Firefox for the Mac. If you use the Mac you will have to download a plug-in in order to view the PDFs. However if you upload the document to Google Docs you will be able to view it in all browsers!

I have been working on a Geometry resources binder (which is embedded below). It is in no sense done, full, or that great just yet. It is definitely a work in progress but I am still learning new features Livebinder has to offer. I am going to continue to work on my binder and add more documents to which I can continue to use effectively with my students.

High School Geometry Resources

Here is a ready to use binder for Surface Area in Geometry

Surface Area

Having an online binder could help students who are absent from school but have access to the computer. It could also help students HOW to organize information. As a high school teacher I have realized that many of my students cannot organize their binder without some type of organization if they are seeing this type of binder every chapter it may help them become more organized with their information.

Livebinders: How 2.0

Do you have binders full of documents for each class you teach? Do you have an unorganized "My Documents" folder on your computer? Well do I have an easy solution for you, Livebinders is your place!

Livebinders is a free site that allows you to gather your resources, neatly organize those resources, and present them to others. Here are some tutorial videos to get your livebinder started. The great thing is with livebinders you can add the links you would normally show (or give) in class, you can also add your links from delicious! :)

Sharing Livebinders is easy, you can embed it into a blog, website, or on a desktop. With sharing so easy, this might be a great tool to use for the telecollaborative project because as the teacher/facilitator you/your class could upload pictures, websites, and documents created. This will allow you to have it all in one place and keep you organized because you could have a tab for each "day" or each "reading" depending on what type of project you were doing.

Here are some of the featured binders I have come across and found useful/unique:

http://livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit?id=13560 (Web 2.0)
http://livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit?id=12726 (Area and Perimeter, but GREAT fill in the blank survey instead of giving a paper copy!)
http://livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit?id=10649 (Atmosphere and Weather)
http://livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit?id=8942 (Kindergarten Language Arts Resources)

Has anyone ever used a livebinder?

- Laurie

Educational Uses for Timetoast: How 2.0

As I mentioned before timetoast is an interactive timeline for students. During work today I thought about some of the educational uses for timetoast and came to an important realization.

Since I teach in Baltimore County our students only receive username and passwords and are never given email accounts or access to any type of email. You may be asking yourself why this is a problem, well the real problem lies when you sign up for a timetoast account. When you sign up they require you to make up a username and password and you must also give an email address to get the activation code. Therefore if you teach at a school which does not allow or provide students with email accounts here are some alternatives to still using timetoast.

If you create a timeline you would like to share with the class to have them discuss you can actually embed the code into a wiki or any other site that allows you to share or embed html or javascript.You can also create a timeline as a class or let groups use your account to create the timeline and then embed them to the wiki.

Embedding a timeline into a wiki is pretty simple. First: Choose the timeline you would like to embed, at the bottom it says embed/share. Second: Copy the embed code. Third: Make sure you are in the edit section of your wiki and click on the Insert Plugin. Fourth: Under the HTML and Gadget section, choose HTML/Javascript. Fifth: Where it says enter code here, paste the embed code. Sixth: Click Next, then Insert Plugin, then Save. When you go back to View your wiki you should see the timeline.

Education Ideas:

• History Projects (chapter topics or the life of specific historical figures)
• Science (to keep track of how different plants grow or the evolution of different species/theories)
• Personal (have them do a personal timeline about things they have done)
• Math (have them do a timeline on their allowance and see how their money grows or decreasing depending on if they spend their money)
• Reading (Discuss how a character changes over a period of time in a specific book or reading)
• Music (Have the students log their practice hours to reflect on how they have gotten better by practicing more or the evolution of different instruments)

These were just some ideas of how you might be able to use these timelines to increase the discussion and to help students become more reflective learners, when they look back over what they have accomplished or learned. Here is a useful timeline for Math teachers as an example of how to use timetoast in their classrooms.

What are some other ways you could incorporate timelines into your instruction?

Timetoast: How 2.0

Recently when I was at a professional development they spoke about timetoast, once I got home I had to immediately do more research because it was has so many educational uses.

Timetoast allows people a chance to create an interactive timeline. Timetoast allows you to add dates, descriptions, links, images, and titles to each event. This site is very easy to navigate and use. Some other sites are: Read Write Think, Timeline Maker, Time Rime, and Our Time Lines.

The first step is to go to their website and create an free account. When you "publish" your timeline it will be shared with all users who are a part of timetoast. In order to access timetoast you have to have flash player on your computer(you may need to disable Javascript in order to view the material).

Timetoast is a great site because focuses on differentiated instruction, here are some of the differentiation strategies it has to offer:

• appeals to the kinesthetic learner who learns by doing/being physically active


• allows students to easily and quickly demonstrate what they know


• provides more time for reflective learners because students can work from school or home


• allows the teacher to gain background knowledge on what information students have learned in previous classes


• appeals to visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile learners
  and more...

Here is an example of the history through rock and roll (created by user: rnojessica)

One feature that you can't tell from this screenshot is that every time you mouse over a dot it gives you that blurb and the one before and directly after the one you are on.

This tool has a lot of potential for actively engaging students to meet each different type of learner all in one tool!

The only downfall of timetoast that I have run into is that it does not allow you to go into B.C. time era.

Has anyone ever used any create a timeline online programs?

Discussions on Wikis: How 2.0

After my last post about how to incorporate discussions into wikis I have done some research and found some good "starter" websites to see how they incorporate discussions.

The first place I searched was on the Pbworks support site and found this video which I thought really explained the intended use for a wiki. This site is also the main support center for pbworks. It describes how instead of items getting lost in an inbox on your email, you have a place where a collaborative group can write out their thoughts and edit or add ideas to the discussion. This site also gives links to different "how to" documents or videos.

Jen Wagner has created a great tutorial which walks a new user through how to set up, edit, add links to pages, "extras", adding new pages, some quick guides, and how to change user and other settings.

Another video describes some features not many people realize pbworks is capable of: how to search topics and create a table of contents. It gives a step by step overview of how pbworks allows you to search through the wiki for specific topics you would like to find quickly.

Probably the most helpful site gave some good wiki examples. It showed current wikis and how they are being incorporated into the classroom or into trainings for educators. Some of the more helpful one's I stumbled upon from the previous site (not only for discussion boards but also for web 2.0 FAQ):

• http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/ (great website for Web 2.0 tools)


• http://healigan.wikispaces.com/message/view/home/15665196 (these are discussions on poems)


• http://model-bfwilson.wikispaces.com/message/view/home/8136797 (discussion on biweekly reading)

• http://crowdsourcingexamples.pbworks.com/ (this just had some good discussion or ways that people gave their thoughts about the topic at hand)

The last helpful site I found had some great grading rubrics for when you had discussions or collaborative groups make a wiki page of information. (check out pages 3-5 for the rubrics)

-Laurie

Wikis- How 2.0

This year my school had given all the teachers a week long opportunity to attend a Web 2.0 training (we are a STEM academy, so it is required that we use technology as much as we can). The training was offered the first week of summer the previous school year, during the training there were multiple different sessions teachers used to get a closer look about how to use different web 2.0 tools. One of the tools most of the departments focused on were using Wikis. In BCPS we are asked to use http://pbworks.com/ because this is the "education" wikispace; but some other free blogging or website sites are: Wikispaces, Wetpaint, Edublogs, Stixy, or Kidblog.

A wiki is a website where teachers, students, and parents can have a discussion about different topics posed by the teacher, student, or parents. The teacher can also post documents, pictures, or links to websites to provide to the person on the other end.

Unfortunately this year most of our teachers have not been using the wiki as a wiki but more so as a website to get the information out there. In one of our classes (ET 680) we talked about the levels of use for technology: Level 0- Non use, Level 1- Orientation, Level 2- Preparation, Level 3- Mechanical, Level 4A- Routine, Level 4B- Refinement, Level 5- Integration, and Level 6- Renewal. I think that most of my colleagues (myself included) are around a Level 4, we are comfortable using the wiki by uploading files, pictures, and put links into our wiki however we just need to get to that point where we use its full capabilities.

Here are some of our teacher/class wikis (used with permission from the teachers, also I am not sure of their security on their site so you may not be able to see it without emailing them to be granted access):
https://justicechsmath.pbworks.com/
http://parlettemath.pbworks.com/
https://nortonsh.pbworks.com/
https://mrfieldmath.pbworks.com/
http://mtsthelensvlemathchallenge2.pbworks.com/














When others have made discussions, do you make them from a whole new page in wiki? I don't know how you could ask different questions all from the same page. This is part of the reason I personally don't know how I can make different discussions go on all in the same site because we were just taught the basics of uploading files, pictures, and putting links on the wiki.

Does anyone have any other suggestions, ideas, or best practices they know about on how to get teachers started on making their wiki more like a wiki and not just a website?

-Laurie

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog, I am happy to have you!! The purpose of this blog is for teachers, administrators, and others to find out how to use and incorporate different Web 2.0 tools in educating different types of learners. Please feel free to ask questions or leave feedback as to how one could use these tools effectively. I hope this site and the links useful! Enjoy and I look forward to blogging! :)

-Laurie