Saturday, January 30, 2010

DIIGOs!

I now have a Diigo set up (feel like a should be somewhat Austrialian by now -Dingos)
This was much T-wiki-er than RSS feeds, blog,and wikis, but will be a useful tools in finding articles, lessons, using in a classroom for having students read articles. Could be used to create list for students as a resource list, and showing the students how they can set up diigos of their own with tags. Again this is a great resource for internet searches coming to me..a time saving device.

Wikispaces Blog » Blog Archive » Best Educational Wikis of 2009

Wikispaces Blog » Blog Archive » Best Educational Wikis of 2009

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Wiki Update

Finally, I got the 3 videos I wanted on the Wiki.
Persistence !

Reliability

I am also Reading "Empowering Students with Technology" by Alan November.
He discusses an experience a HS student had several years ago while researching the Holocaust. He stumbled across Prof. Arthur Butz's site (Prof @ NorthWestern U). The Professor did not deny the existence of the holocaust camps, but he explained the existence of the camps as an attempt by the German govt. to fight typhus carried by lice. He did not deny the shaving and the showers; the canisters of the gas, Zylon; and the crematorias and the death. He calmly and simply explains these details as necessary actions for the eradication of pervasive lice. The Student did not know how to read website. He was not taught the critical thinking skills of understanding the structure of the information or how to cros-reference the source. His lack of knowledge to think critically about information he read, made him a victim. (page 55 of the book)
I think I really need to compose some lessons regarding the internet sue/reliblility before I get too far into using the web for research with students. I could provide them with what I find are reliable sites for now, but then we are missing out on critial thinking.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

CLASS POSTER

Had fun creating the poster which is off to the right.
I just added words related to subjects taught in my class.
I'm going to have the students experiment on this site my making a poster of themselves, and then a poster on a book they have just read.

WIKI waki wacky

Started a Wiki today.
This was not nearly as easy as the Blog.
Some of my problems may be related to using a different and slower computer (mine died). I added the pages within the site, one for each student group to work on. It was actually like setting up a Jigsaw, which we have done in class before. The main page will be a summary of the short story, and from the short story they will go to their own wiki page for the collaborative composition of the sub topics. I'd like to set up the summary so that blue letters would appear on the subtopic name and automatically take them to sites with information on the subtopic. Haven't figured that out yet.
I did set up the site as "protected" as suggested by Richardson in the text.
I am working on adding a video "Wikis in Plain English" which would be for student viewing.
(This was actually someone else's idea which I am borrowing).
I'm wondering about the directions in the text p67, where it says the students will have to set up accounts, give me their log in names, and to do so they need an email address. What if they do not have an email address?

Monday, January 18, 2010

Bonnie Smith Web2.0

The creation of my new blog was fun, especially since it did work!

One problem I encountered was in adding gadgets. I tried to add video link, so that I could add the u-tube video The Lottery. To paste in the wanted video was easy, but I also got two other videos attached that I did not want. I tried to delete them, but found no way to do that; but there was a way to block them out so they appeared black and not available for viewing. Mistakenly, I blacked out the 2nd video of the Lottery (PART 2), and never could unblock it. So I left it as it was, with only the one video (part I) showing.
I closed the site, reopening it later, only to find the blocked out videos were now replace with something I never asked for... I could not get rid of it, nor control it. Eventually I just deleted the video gadget altogether. I would like to figure what I did wrong, so eventually I could paste the U-Tube video on my blog, and the students could view the video as we read this story later this year.

Second, possible problem was the school website. The Web administrator says he CAN post the blog, even though the word blog is in the address.

Third problem- but not quite a problem... I am holding off on using this with the students because I do not want the students to access our teaching experience... Although I am not too sure that would hurt for them to see us as learners, too.

Problem 4: the first time I did the blog I forgot to do the step that corrected spelling, and mispelled my own name. I couldn't figure out how to correct it, so had to delete it and start again. I now have that feature added, and have even used it in this writing.

I was so excited about my blog site, I e-mailed several friends, and teachers to view it. So far they have liked it and so do I!