SearchWiki

I will freely admit that I'm addicted to Google. I'm not sure how I survived without gmail, Google Docs, iGoogle page, Google Maps, and even basic Google searches before the site was around. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't use Google for something. It seems that they are always adding new features and apps that make using Google even more fun and useful.

I noticed when I logged in the other day that they've added yet another new feature called Searchwiki. Basically, this will allow you to customize your search results, save your results, and make notes about the search pages that you find. This brief video from Google can explain it better then I can.



I haven't gone and played around with this at all in my own Google account, but I thought it looked interesting. It seems like a form of social bookmarking. I could see myself using this to save the sites I go to often or to make a note to remember something about a site. The possiblities could be endless!

Wetpaint - a free wiki and website tool!

Yet another great resource has been found! Its called Wetpaint!click on the logo to get to wetpaint.com

Wetpaint.com is a site that allows users to create wiki's for educational or personal purposes. Currently Wetpaint hosts over a million different wikis built by variety of different users, from individuals to small organizations, clubs, interest groups, educators and anyone who has information to share! Topics vary in the same wide range with their creators.

Wetpaint was started in 2005 as an idea of a group of friends thought "why not make it easy for groups of people to share information, experiences and build social communities around anything they want?" Their motivation for this emerged, as one of them was suffering from cancer and they were looking for information online on how other people coped with a similar situation.

Some of the cool Wetpaint features include:

• Easy 1-2-3 creation
• Many facilitating tools for content creation and collaboration
• Public and private sites
• Onsite messaging
• Addressbooks
• Automated links
• Templates for different site types
• Site search
• RSS feeds and email notifications
• Personalized profiles
• and most of all IT'S FREE!

Us as instructional design students and professionals can really take advantage of a tool like Wetpaint. As we are stepping out of the shelter of the University it is extremely advantageous to have a website or online porfolio to portray our accomplishments and show off our work. Creating a personal wiki, like Wetpaint, can be an easy and affordable option to get your name out there. Rather than paying for a domain name and a server and spending hours writing html and css codes (Dr.Doll, Please don't get mad...), a free and easily editable wiki sounds like a tempting idea! So, check it out! ;)

Using Wikipedia in the Classroom

When I was student teaching, I can remember one of my student teaching cooperating teachers telling me about what a problem Wikipedia was with her students. She said all of them were using it and she was going to make a rule that it could not be used at all. When I asked her why, she told me because it wasn't accurate and that "most" of the information was wrong.

For a long time, I used this same mentality with my students as well. When I saw Wikipedia as a resource on a paper, I'd take points off. Now that I teach online, I see even more cases of students using Wikipedia. So, I decided to do a bit of research on the site myself to see if it was valid or not.

I've since realized that Wikipedia can be an extremely useful research tool for students. I advise them to use Wikipedia as a starting place for their papers- to use it to find additional sites or other points to research on a topic. I also found a very interesting way to use Wikipedia in the classroom that I thought I'd share with everyone. Many teachers have started using Wikipedia as a learning tool. They have their students research articles to find out if they are valid. Another teacher, who commented on this blog , had her students research their town history to add information to their Wikipedia article.

In fact, Wikipedia itself appears to be getting in on the trend of using their site in the classroom. The Wikipedia Signpost (which is a "community-written and community-edited newspaper, covering events and stories related to Wikipedia") has a great article about classroom ideas. You can read the article here. Enjoy!

Aloha from my Wiki Field Trip

Just a short message to the class from Hawaii. As you can see I'm researching Wikis and how all this got started :) All kidding aside, my message this week is that we should have fun at what we do and build. Learning can be fun and in the virtual world environment it should be our goal to keep it fun for the learners (which will keep thier interest). Depending on the learning objectives, on line courses can be fun and interesting. Use of pictures, activities and interactive fun can keep the learners attention. Mahalo (Thank you)

Waikoloa Beach

Honolulu Airport

Great Site - Classroom 2.0!

I found a great website for those people who are interested in breaking out of the boundaries of a classroom and collaborating with other teachers, students, administration, and integration technologists in transforming education. It is a supportative, social community with suggestions, experiences, and stories on how they use or want to use technology in their classrooms. There are wikis, blogs, online meetings, many different groups (ArtTeach, MAC Classroom 2.0, Distance Collaborations, High School Math Teachers, Implementing Instructional Technologies Innovations, Second Life, etc) that you can join, and a ton of other extremely interesting videos, photos, and chats to join and see. Check it out…you won’t be disappointed! http://www.classroom20.com/

Ways to Use a Wiki

We have been developing our wikis in this class, and for some, it is a new experience while, for others, it is not. I fall somewhere in the middle. Wikis and Blogs are not new to me and I visit many of them for ideas or inspiration. I have not, however, contributed to as many as I visit as a "spectator."

Just this week, however, I discovered a practical application for using a wiki in my classroom. Basically, instead of having my Digital Media Class teams keep a noteboook of their ideas and plans for their daily morning broadcast, I provided a wiki space (within Bb) for them to use for planning. The advantage is that each group can visit eachother's pages on the wiki and leave comments or suggestions on the ideas posted. They can also share helpful links.

One of the blogs I do read frequently is "Moving at the Speed of Creativity," written by Wesley Fryer and, in a timely fashion, he posted a list this week of "Ways to Use a Wiki." In his blog post, he included the list below:

1. Connect with parents through publishing student work
2. Homework groups with kids (ask questions)
3. Share lesson plans with other teachers and links
4. In lieu of a faculty meeting
5. Write a new school song collaboratively, brainstorm ideas
6. Put websites for articles students need to read, and then discuss it together online
7. Post homework assignments and makeup work for absent students
8. Schedules and calendars
9. Collaborative projects with other classrooms in the US or outside
10. Book reviews!
11. Science journaling
12. Study guides for the test
13. Science fair presentations
14. Collaboration to plan fundraisers or other activities
15. Diary of a science experiment
16. Literature response podcasting or video publishing
17. Book talks
18. Literature circle
19. RSS feeds for kid friendly publishing (let parents subscribe to updates)
20. Posting projects

Wiki Adoption

Wikis are gaining acceptance as a viable collaboration and knowledge sharing tool in corporate America. In order for a Wiki to continue to be a viable tool it must be seen as relevant, up to date and have buy-in from the users/contributors of the Wiki. With this in mind, I started looking for resources on how to get my users to start using Wikis. I stumbled across an excellent resource of tools and techniques to use in the development of a corporate wiki for our training department.

This site points out that there is no one right way to develop a wiki and describes patterns and what can be done to ensure your wiki is successful. This site breaks patterns into four categories: People Patterns, Anti-people patterns, Adoption patterns and Adoption Anti-patterns. http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/Wikipatterns What I really like about this site is it's a wiki, it offers ideas, obstacles and solutions for the development and adoption of Wikis. Check it out.

eLearning Magazine September 8 Article Review

I was reading through my email and found one from The eLearning Guild which I joined last week. While I was going through the mail I stumbled across this weeks article titled Why e-Learning 2.0? So I proceeded to read the article and was very interested in the authors precisness about technology.

The article started off explaining how with Web 1.0 the idea was simply to connect people to the internet to retrieve content. Michele Martin and Sanjay Parker then explain that with the advent of Web 2.0 the paradigm shifted to not only connect people to the content but to also allow collaboration of the content over the internet. The authors then when onto explain how this shift creates a positive affect on e-Learning. The article compares and contrasts the traditional e-Learning style, known as learning 1.0, and the new phenomonum called e-Learning 2.0. In their comparison, Martin and Parker state that because of the social networking and engagement of the learner, learning is now on a newer level.

The social media tools (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, WikiPedia, etc.) allow the learner not only engage in the learning experience locally but more importantly globally. Martin and Parker cited how some companies such as software giant Serena, GE, and Ernest & Young LLP are tapping into the web and e-leaarning 2.0 paradigm. They stated that these compaines are using blogs, wikis, podcasts, and RSS feeds for their employees and even in the recruiting effort.

Serena is the maker of Ning, another social networking site that also allows coompanies to pay a monthly fee to quiet the ads and run behind a compaines firewall.

The other neat piece of the article was their Top Five list of reasons to adopt e-Learning 2.0:

1. Guild members currently using e-Learning 2.0
   are reporting that it works
2. The Digital Natives are entering the workforce
   and they're expecting social media
3. Barriers to entry and experimentation are low
4. Re-purposed content is cost effective
5. Scary thought for the day … your competitors,
   customers, and employees are already using
   these tools.

The article then continued by detailing each of the five reasons to adopt e-Learning 2.0. Finally in the end of the article they spoke about the concerns for this new technology. While Martin and Parker pointed out that the reasons usually center around legal, regulatory, or confidentiality, I found it interesting that they alikened these concerns to water cooler talk, sending messages through email, or just simply handing over documents. If we really think about this for a moment, the 2.0 technology medium is more safe than those mentioned above. At the very least companies can control what is being shared. They pointed out that government agencies such as CIA , DIA, and FBI have all implemented social media tools for their employees.

It will be interesting to see how fast companies, like mine, adopt e-Learning 2.0. You can access the article at http://www.elearningguild.com/

Great Tool for Teachers and Students! Schoolwires

Recently, I attended a meeting at our School District about changing the way we maintain, update, and change our website. We met with a rep from http://www.schoolwires.com/, a company from State College, PA that offers a variety of web tools for teachers, students, parents, administration, and the community to utilize. Schoolwires will create your website to your specifications, host the website, and enable teachers to create their own websites without having to know a line of code. Word, xhtml, FrontPage, and Dreamweaver are just a few of the tools teachers can use to create their website. In addition, teachers can upload their homework every night and include important dates on a district calendar. Blogs and wikis will be available to the students, which will open up a whole new way of learning and communicating with each other and their teachers. The entire implementation will take up to 6 months so as we progress through the design and integration, I will report on our progress and any new and exiting features that I learn about!