Have you been looking for a free webinar beginners series on using web tools? Well look no further!
Pleased to announced we have exciting news! Edublogs and Classroom 2.0 LIVE!, supported by Elluminate is combining to bring you a fortnightly series of webinar series for beginners.
About The Classroom 2.0 LIVE! Beginner Series
What this means is I will be facilitating the beginners series for both the Edublogs Live and Classroom 2.0 LIVE! community supported by the amazing team of Steve Hargadon, Peggy George, Kim Caise and Lorna Costantini from Classroom 2.0 LIVE!
The beginner series kicks off this week with a three-part series, over six weeks, on “Go Wild with Wikis.” My aim is to bring my expertise in providing simple how-to information into a live web format. Focus will be to help educators new to web technologies learn more about how they can use these tools for their own learning and with their students while also providing ‘takeaways’ for the more experienced users.
To be notified of the latest events we recommend:
- Join Classroom 2.0 – If you are new to using a Ning community refer to this information
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How You Can Help
I want to take the same approach to these webinars as The Edublogger; where the community and the conversations that occur contribute to the information shared.
Please leave a comment (or write a post) to share information on all or any of the following:
- How you explain to new people what are wikis
- Reasons why you use wiki(s)
- How you use a wiki for your professional learning and/or with your students
- Examples of your favorite wikis
- Questions you have always wanted answered about wikis
PS your comments (posts) for this are important as I want to demonstrate (and model) how the community and networks can provide greater ideas/innovation than any individual working alone (NO pressure off course 😎 )
FINAL THOUGHTS
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Sue,
I just listened to the recording of the 13th meeting. I am excited to be there live tomorrow night. I started a class wiki this year-loved it-kids loved it. But when they found the email I lost control. Using the free version of wikispaces, I did not know what to do. A parent informed me of inappropriate mail her son received. I could not monitor all their emails, which were not school related, but were sent through the wiki. I teach 4th graders. Help?
Hi Susan, I am really glad you brought this to all our attention. That is not a good situation for you and could happen on any of these types of platforms where they can easily email between each other.
One aspect is definitely there is a need for this constant discussion with them on what is appropriate online behaviour and the consequences if they are inappropriate. However you still need to prevent this from happening.
To stop it from happening I would do is set up all student accounts using the gmail+ method. This means all emails that are sent would come into the one gmail account so you can monitor them more closely.
But that is my thought. Would love to hear how others would manage this type of situation.
Hope to see you online for the session in 12 hours!
Hello!
am really enjoying your work with the Beginner Series. Thanks!
I think I am finally using my wiki for collaboration purposes but it has turned into a little mess. The connections and the collaboration are great! My kids LOVE it and are really engaged. This engagement has really translated into appreciation for other cultures, languages, and countries. My question is how to organize the wiki for questions and replies. We are communicating with a school in Turkey and the different time zones made the Skype conversations a bit of a challenge. Check out my site http://elementaryspanish.wikispaces.com/Around+the+World
, if you have time, and you’ll see what I mean. It’s not pretty. Maybe I should be using the Discussion tag, I’m not sure.
Again, I absolutely love it; I just want to better organize our conversations and maybe add more schools.
Thanks,
Leslie
Hi Leslie, Glad to hear your feedback on the beginners series plus excellent to hear how your wiki is helping them learn more about other cultures.
Can see what you mean about the issues of the questions and replies. As I said previously I am biased (since I do work for a blogging company) however I think that in the case of the questions and replies you would be better using a class blog. Where you write posts about the question, or write posts on what you think is the answer and then invite the students from the other country to reply in comments with their thoughts. While you could use the discussion tab I don’t think you would achieve any where near as good an outcome as using a blog.
One wiki that has been well used by educators is pbwiki.com … but they have expanded their functionality so much that a couple of weeks ago they changed their name to pbworks.com
You can listen to an interview with the founder of pbwiki (David Weekly ) made just last week as part of the Podcast “Net@Night”
http://twit.tv/natn99
He actually mentions education use of wikis in his interview.
OK … now question of the week
In”pbwiki” … what does the “pb” stand for …. the answer will result in a smile!
p.s. the richness of the comments in this Blog Post are a good illustraion themselves of the collaborative nature of Web 2 …… “walking the walk and talking the talk”
Thanks Shamblesguru for the information about pbWorks and the link to the interview. Chuckling re-PB. First thing I ever learnt about pbWikis was Peanut Butter. pbWikis because they are as easy as Peanut butter — shame so many aussies hate Peanut butter though.
Totally agree regarding the collaborative nature of Web 2.0 and work hard on trying to encourage collaboration. I know a lot of bloggers choose not to respond to comments on their blog posts. To some extent I can understand why as it can be time consuming but the conversation is considerably richer when you engage and discuss the ideas.
They are also continuing the conversation if you want to check it out.
Yes. That’s one thing I learned from you early on, Sue. Always try to respond to comments. I think it adds a personal touch, allows to further discuss the topic, and shows that you value people.
It also turns the blog from a one-way reporting platform, to a two-way open conversation.
The whole aspect of whether you respond back to comments or not is an interesting debate. Ultimately it really depends on why you blog.
Most probloggers won’t comment back at comments. Especially the top probloggers… because it is time consuming and if they spent time responding to comments they would have no time to write posts (that is how they look at it).
As edubloggers what we are trying to achieve is different and off course there will be different variations to it. For me, engaging in the conversations in comments means I learn more because I have to reflect on what the person has written and then consider my response. Sort of like the deeper learning you get from writing a blog post.
But as you say it also makes it a two-way open conversation, shows you value their input and builds communities that work together.
Definitely time consuming (especially when you have the number of blogs I have) but worth the time.
So well-put! I appreciate your time! 😉
I am the crazy lady who had the chatty baby in the back of tonight’s session. Sorry about that! He was eager to share with you too!!
How you explain to new people what are wikis
** Wikis are a place to share information for collaboration. WIkis allow everyone the opportunity to add to the information through editing the page and then re-saving the information.
Reasons why you use wiki(s)
**I like the instantaneous saving. I can whip up a project and save it to the web so quickly. They are super easy to create.
How you use a wiki for your professional learning and/or with your students
**I use them with my students currently to collaborate and give out information on our Exquisite Science Experiments unit.
Examples of your favorite wikis
**I am not sure I have one….yet.:)
Questions you have always wanted answered about wikis
**I don’t have any right now. I learned a lot tonight about that discussion tab. I’m glad I was on!
Here’s my wiki:
https://championsofroom101.wikispaces.com/
We are currently working on the Exquisite Science Experiments tab.
Thank you again, Sue! I am glad to be connected with such fine educators!
Absolutely not crazy and chatty baby was no problem at all. It was excellent for you to join us to share your thoughts.
You want to see crazy (smart) let me tell you about the time I was invited to a meeting at my work & I took my 3 month old baby then left him on the hands of the Director while I went to get something. When you take into account it is a 50 minute drive each way to my work I definitely made sure they never organised another meeting like this again 🙂
The discussion tab is really important when you have student collaborating. I plan to discuss this whole aspect of collaboration in the next session as it is so important but something people don’t always realise what is required. Your wiki is coming together well; love how you are organising your experiment (if you are unaware I am a scientist so look at these aspects critically). A way you could extend their work is to ask people with a scientific background to drop past, review their work and give suggestions/tips.
To teachers who have never used wikis:
Start organizing your own materials on a wiki. You’ll fall in love with them. You’ll never stop. You’ll ask your students to join the adventure. Guaranteed.
I totally agree Gabriela, once you start organising your material on them you see how easy they are to use plus get ideas on how you to use with students.
You were totally FABULOUS!!!! So much energy!!!!
Thanks Lisa, that means a real lot coming from you and I really appreciate all the support you have always given me.
Hello to All,
great to read your experiences with wikis and wondering if anyone can give me some ideas to spice up my student wiki at the above adress. I’m finding it a bit lifeless and simply like a document storage area currently – we’d love to get some global connections going….?
You probably don’t realise that but it is a really good question Amanda and perhaps one that I’m going to struggle to answer. Hope some one else helps us out.
Here is how I see it and it is just my opinion. Wikis are really good for pulling information together, sharing resources, collaboration where you are working on specific projects (which generally have short durations). To me wikis are almost like the final project, similar that Google Docs can be like that.
If my goal was creating global connections and getting conversations really happening between different countries/students etc I would use a class blog and/or student blogs. The other aspect to consider is collaboration on a wiki is very different from a blog. Together the complement each other well and provide extra skills.
PS Please feel free everyone to challenge my opinions, debate them or just agree.
Hi Amanda, I had a look at your wiki.
I think it shows how well organized your course is. (I would have loved my teachers to organize courses like this, but wikis were far away to come into existence when I was a student). If I were you I’d include the pages edited by students on the sidebar, and edit them with big headlines, so that their work looked more relevant.
I agree with Sue, if you want your students to contact the outside world, blogs are the tools to achieve this.
I like the work you do here Sue! Great stuff.
I love Classroom 2.0 – I’m a member, and I think it one of the best resources on the web for educators interested in internet (and other) technologies. These excellent “beginner series” offerings are just one of many ways in which this social network offers value to the educational community.
I also blog about emerging internet technologies, often from an introductory or ‘beginners’ perspective, at http://www.EmergingEdTech.com.
Thanks. Keep these great posts coming!
Classroom 2.0 is an excellent site and I’m honored to be involved with their program. Fingers crossed (tightly) with the beginners series because I hope to bring to it my usual approach which is breaking it into parts that people need to know while making it understandable.
I think my biggest challenge with blogging (if you watch the comments) is the comments on my blogs keep me very busy — which is excellent because this is where so much extra learning happens. Best of luck with your blogging also and glad you find my posts helpful!
Hi Sue,
I am a beginner wiki user but see its potential. Have set up 2 wikis – 1 for my students to add/find information on what we are studying in class – adding opinions, getting students to write notes for others on a topic etc. The other one is for my faculty and is, as others have said, a place to put all web resources, links etc so they are all in one spot and accessible by everyone. Great time saver and means all have equal access to resources for their students.
Haven’t used the discussion features yet but will also check out Google Docs as well after reading discussion
I do use discussion feature but not to the extent that Anne would be with her students. With the number of large projects she is involved with using wikis she is one of the best sources to discuss what needs to be done with using discussion.
Google Docs is very powerful. I use them all the time for our Edublogs work and from our point of view important because we are sharing documents across distance that we can work on together.
My favourite wiki host is probably wikispaces ….. see comment on my Personal Learning Network PLN … http://www.shambles.net/csmith/pln/#wiki
I’d be interested in hearing comments from readers that compare using a Wiki to using Google Docs
p.s. Craig … thanks for Nota … I’d not heard of it … but not sure if I’d call it a Wiki … I’d probably stick a general http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/ict/collab Collaborative Tool” label on it …. but then “what is the http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/ict/wiki/ definition of a wiki?”
OH … almost forgot (learning point … don’t rely on my brain!)
I have a collection of Wiki ppts and videos in a section in my series of Theme Blogs … or more correctly “Forest of Theme Blogs” .. have a look at http://wikivideolibrary.blogspot.com/
phew ;-( ….. so many hyperlinks … and so little time … have fun
I’ve got my ideas on the reasons why people are wikis vs Google Docs but it will be interesting to get the feedback.
Tom Barrett is an excellent example of an educator who uses Google Docs well in the classroom for collaboration with his students. He has lots of great posts about it on his blog.
Thanks telling me which wiki and for all the extra links really appreciate it. Also appreciate all the comments as I will be using them to highlight to the beginners how these types of conversations to lead you to considering aspects you haven’t considered.
We used a wiki when we were planning/designing our new library as it was easy for everyone to be involved and add comments/pictures etc. It worked well and was very useful.
Hi Giselle, I’ve used wikis myself for planning with other people. One of the biggest challenges was differences in interpretation of each others expectations and what collaboration is. Did you have any of these types of issues? And if so how did you deal with them?
One wiki that I have only just recently come across is Nota, and I think that it is fantastic, especially in terms of ease of use and integration of multimedia. I have just recently blogged about it because I’m enjoying it so much – so much potential for collaboration and feedback. Easy to share, embed, a real mash up tool. I heartily recommend you check it out!
Hi Craig, thanks for sharing Nota. Definitely one I haven’t come across. While I don’t believe it is a wiki it certainly has interesting features. Based on checking out your post where you have embedded one it is like an embeddable web site that allows you to write text, embed images/videos which is definitely cool.
Howabout if I mistakenly forget to answer your questions and just leave a link to our wiki:
http://collaborationnation.wikispaces.com
This year we have moved a lot of our work over to google docs
Paul, you know I would always be happy with whatever information you shared with me 🙂 . How you inspire your students is amazing!
But if you have time I do have some specific questions to ask you about your wiki. What I’m wondering is how do you see where your student blogging fits with using your wiki and now Google Docs. I assume you are using each for different purposes and would love to be able to share with others the reasons why (how) you use each.
PS I’m guessing Google Docs so you don’t have to deal with wiki wars and your emphasis is more on collaboration than on sharing the work with others.
Hi Sue, you asked me these questions so I will attempt to answer these as well. Can you tell me with the global projects do you have one student working with a different student in another country or do your students work in teams on the same project? Also how do you manage the issue of students editing the same pages at the same time — do you have trouble losing the information?
With the global projects and how students work with each other – When working with Susie Corbett, USA and answering their questions on Australia, my students chose two other students to work with and answer questions. With the Onafrica wiki, my students will all choose one of the 5 countries, and then as a small group from my school will work with those students who are working the individual countries. So, I have allowed the choice there, which has worked so far. However, I love the notion of students working on a one to one basis but sometimes the numbers do not gel! That is my goal this year to work on one to one basis with real time chat, videoconferencing and maybe wikis!
The flatclassroom projects are far more organized. A grid is set up in google sheets and shared with participating staff. All students are then placed on the grid in teams of four. Certain conditions are made in that no two students from any one school can be in the same team etc. We try and spread across countries so that there is real culture conversations going on. We use the wikis for bringing the project together and as our final product (as you state above) The nings are used for socialising, personal networking, blogging and for students and staff to join in the forum discussions. The best ones were whenthe author, Don Tapscott of “Grown Up Digital” fame, would ask questions. Some of the answers from students were amazing.
We have hit many interesting problems once large numbers of students use the wikis. Wiki wars occur when two or more students edit at the same time. So many students lost their additions, and huge amounts of work would disappear over night. We continue to teach and work through with the students on that issue and would have to go back in the history tab to fix it up. That is why they are encouraged to use the discussion tab and the history window so that we can work through it all. The kids get so annoyed when their work disappears. And this became an area of conflict at times.
Some students from other countries/schools will delete work that they dont think is important when a discussion should take place first as to the value of the work, the need to collaborate etc. We have drawn up a ‘wiki netiquette’ page. Staff meet once a week in elluminate and keep in touch via google groups, so discussion would often take place re wiki wars and we would just work through them with our students.
Some of my students just loved fixing up the wiki pages and would happily go back and restore the lost work. I found that rather fascinating that they enjoyed such a challenge. In the netgened project, we had project managers and assistant project managers as well. This helped keep students on task etc.
I also meant to say the first wiki I worked on was with Chrissy from NZ, who is now in Bangkok. Chrissy skyped me and walked me through the wiki and I wish that we would have had more time back in those days to collaborate more. But, we set up an introductions page, which had a table inserted. Each student introduced themselves by embedding their voki in a cell of the table. The students loved to hear the accents and content of their introductions. See http://anzaconnection.wikispaces.com/Introductions
So the idea with most of these projects is one student is connected up with another student in a different country. Benefits being that you are encouraging conversation and collaboration between students in different countries while also reducing the chances of wiki wars happening (since they often write their sections at different times).
Can you give me any good links to where students have used the discussion tab first to collaborate well before working on their project page?
Don’t suppose you have a link to the “‘wiki netiquette’ page?
Also I understand why your team uses Google Groups but how do you find that? I’ve tried Google Groups but it really ends up frustrating me and wonder if there is a better approach?
Vicki and Julie are the ultimate in organising these types of Global projects. They have amazing facilitation skills and are just a pleasure to watch in action.
I’m in two minds over Nings. My biggest being conversation is limited to members of the Ning.
Sue, at the moment the idea is that one student is connected with three or four others from other countries or schools to work in small groups when in the flatclassroom projects. The wiki netiquette can be found at http://projecthelp.wikispaces.com/Wiki Students do not use the discussion well and that is why there are always so many dramas there with lost work and wiki editing. Wikis, their nature, appropriate use and netiquette need to be taught in 21st century education. I shall try and find a good wiki with good discussion going on but they are rare. A good sample student developed wiki is at http://netgened.wikispaces.com/message/list/6D+Fun+and+the+Personal+Web Lots of discussion going on here http://netgened.wikispaces.com/message/list/The+Personal+Web I really like using google groups. All work is saved on the website, so if emails are deleted there is an archive there. The site also allows file upload so any files submitted can be got from there. All teachers feel comfortable with emailing lists and google groups is the ultimate in emailing lists. What were your frustrations and concerns Sue. I have just started up a google group with the netbook teachers in our local p12 schools and that is working well. Students in grade 5 are part of an innovative trial program whereby students have a netbook for three years which is part paid for by DEECD, parents and the school. So their teachers are now on a steep learning curve.
I wrote out a lengthy reply to this at school but it must not have sent, so this comment may not be so long.
1. Students still tend to work in teams of three or four but I would like to try more of one on one. So, a student may come from the Middle East, Spain, Australia and USA and that would be the group researching and sharing one topic.
2. An excellent example of a student built wiki page is http://netgened.wikispaces.com/6D+Fun+and+the+Personal+Web
3. The wiki netiquette is at http://projecthelp.wikispaces.com/Wiki
4. Students do not discuss well and then add to the wiki. They just get on do it, lose work and then discuss. So appropriate wikis need to be taught from the beginning. However a lot of discussion went on on this wiki page http://netgened.wikispaces.com/message/list/The+Personal+Web
5. I love google groups. If I delete emails by mistake, they can all be retrieved from the website that is automatically setup. Files can be stored there too. All teachers are now comfortable with emails and the list is something that they will use and add to. I have just started a google group for our district p12 schools in the netbook program and it is working really well.
I totally agree that Google Groups is good for educators who are less into technology. I’ve just found the constant emails drive me crazy but maybe I’m using them wrongly.
Perhaps when we both have more time we could compare Google Groups methods to see if it is how differently we are using to see if that is the problem?
Thanks for all the links I really appreciate it as do the others!
A wiki in simple terms is a web page that can be edited easily by one person or by many. It can be used as for a collection of resources, but its most powerful use is for collaborative purposes, where members can work in virtual teams to achieve a site full of rich material that can include text, links, images, video, podcasts and other multimedia etc.
My first use of wikis was to keep all the online resources that I have found in one easily accessbile website. However, since then I have used wikis with global staff and students. The flatclassroom projects use wikis for the collection of materials from the virtual global student teams. See netgened.wikispaces.com This was a fabulous project that has just finished.
The flatclassroom and digiteen projects are work in progress at the moment and these can be seen at digiteen09-2.flatclassroomproject.org/
(the digiteen project on digital citizenship) and the flatclassroom project at flatclassroom09-2.flatclassroomproject.org/ Our grade 3-7 students are involved in the es1001tales.wikispaces.com and the ms1001tales.wikispaces.com where students are grouped together with two other schools from two other countries. They each write story, place it on the shared wiki and their group members read it, provide feedback and positive ideas for improvement. After two more drafts their work is complete, Images are added etc.
My year 8 students are the sounding board for a project on Africa http://onafrica.pbwiki.com
I am also starting wikis for each of my sugject areas as resource collections initially.
I love the work that Vicki Davis does with eportfolios and her students. I tend to use blogs, but Vicki uses wikis.
My students have had to learn how to tag, add discussions, write in the history tab etc. Wiki wars have occurred and it has been a steep learning curve.
I would love to know how to add RSS feeds from delicious and diigo.
My personal opinion is that the Flat Classroom series of projects is one of the best examples of using wikis collaboratively.
It’s funny re-wikis vs blogs vs Nings for the different activities. I could have a considerably long debate here on the pros and cons of each. I see wikis are excellent for producing the finished product and bringing it together, while blogs are an important part of the reflective process and building connections. How you collaborate on a wiki is very different from a blog.
Oh I would love to hear about the wikis wars! I assume this is where students delete each others work or are the first to save (and delete?).
Like you I use wikis to pull together resources.
Delicious and Diigo — too hard 🙂 . I like to use Google Gadgets RSS feed because it means I can have more than 20 rss feed items. Would you like me to give you the links to the Gadgets I use?
I loved wikispaces for my 5/6 class. With 4 computers in my classrooms I created 10 stations in my class with computers being Station 1 and Station 2. Students worked in partners moving from one station to another. The two week study explaining each station task was put on a wiki. Students used the wiki from home and in the classroom to complete tasks that required the Internet or writing assignments. The wiki extended their learning by providing the goals, assignments and resources for the study. Wikis were a great way to set up a long-term independent study for my class.
For my own profession learning I use a wiki to collect and organize web 2.0 resources and tutorials. I especially found this wiki http://cdnblogday.wikispaces.com/ very helpful for learning how to use images and other new tech tools.
My question is about editing a wiki with a member. I need guidelines for ways to work collaboratively while writing on a wiki. My big fear is deleting work of others. Is it as simple as just one person working at a time?
Totally agree Nilah wikis are excellent for specific project type work where you want students to create and collaborate.
Deleting by another member is a common fear. I’ve been in a situation where experienced adult users have lost information they entered. Off course I got blamed but had a good chuckle when I pointed out that it is very clear when another person starts editing the page that the first one to save often wins. As experienced users they should have known better.
The answer? Well that is probably a better question for Anne (murcha) to answer but yes that is normally what I do. Give them different pages on the wiki to work on or have one write while the other reviews. Remember that you can click on the history tab and compare the different versions.
Thanks for the link to that wiki — excellent wiki.
We have had a lot of issues with both staff and students, when working globally, on losing work and a lot of work at times. If two people are working on the same page at the same time, a wiki war occurs and the last to “save” overrides any other edits. It is called a wiki war, according to Vicki Davis. Wikispaces puts up a note at the bottom if someone is on the same page at the same time, so I tell my students to get out of there. Type their work up in a word processor and return later to copy and paste from notepad.
My students got so cross, when their work kept disappearing. It was the biggest bone of contention in the global projects. So we would go back into the history and try and retrieve it all. It was a lot of work to fix up, but some of my students really enjoyed that challenge – restoring all work. Interesting that google docs allows collaboration on the one page at the same time without losing work. However, you can work on different pages of the wiki at the same time, just not the same page. Hope that makes sense!
Hi Anne, thanks for clarifying for people and giving advice based on your extensive experience. It is frustrating that while wikispaces gives the message saying someone else is editing it doesn’t warn of the consequences.
My advice is the same. If you log in and see someone editing get out straight away!. Good tips re-writing in an alternative application.
Yes Google Docs allows that collaborations and it is cool when you have people using different colors while wikis don’t. That is why many have changed to Google Docs.
Resources to help with Wiki session
| Wiki General Info | Wiki Hosting | Wiki Directories | Wikis and Education |
| Student Wikis |
http://www.shambles.net/web2/
Areas on wikis at the bottom of the page …..
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http://www.shambles.net/web2
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Hope these are helpful for the sessions
Shamblesguru
Chris Smith
Hi Chris, thanks for sharing the link to your resources. Wondering if you have a favorite wiki host, and if so which and why?