Daily Archives: October 23, 2006

Bud Hunt
Fort Collins, Colorado, USA
Blog: http://budtheteacher.com
Twitter: @budtheteacher

Presentation Title
“Journey through the Week as I Journey Up (or Down) the Road”

Bio
Bud Hunt teaches high school language arts and journalism at Olde Columbine High School in Longmont, Colorado.

(Since this presentation is audio-only, a YouTube version is not available)

Presentation
http://k12online.wm.edu/a_journey.mp3

While it’s certainly an honor to have been asked to deliver the keynote for the “A Week in the Classroom” portion of the first of what I hope will be many K12 Online Conferences, I have to admit that, after the excitement of being asked to contribute, I was a bit perplexed. Still am. Sure, I’m using this new web in my classroom when I can, and I am fascinated by the blurring of the borders between my classroom and pretty much the entire rest of the world, but I’m not an “expert” when it comes to Web 2.0. None of us are. That’s one of the best parts of exploring these spaces with our students — they and we and us are all traveling together, on a real exploration of a new frontier, a frontier of ideas.

I certainly hope that we don’t tame this frontier too much, and that there are always wide open spaces in some parts, sandy beaches in others, and, not to take this metaphor too far, a few rocky peaks always looming in the distance, transfixing us with both their beauty and the horrific jagged edges that they add to the horizon. Some folks, many of them my teachers, have been living in this space for some time. Lots more folks enter this world every day. Everyone, novice and experienced, teacher and student, brings their ideas and experiences with them, ready to share with the world. As problematic and essential as school, education, teaching, and learning are, there’s plenty of room — and some real, legitimate need — for all of that conversation and learning and juxtaposition and re-mixing of ideas. If you haven’t already, make sure that you know how to contribute to the conversation, David Warlick suggested several tutorials for getting started.

I hope you’re enjoying your exploration of the Read/Write Web. I hope you’re learning. Better still — I hope you’re sharing what you notice as you travel along the road . . . or leaving the (t)rail(s) entirely. Teachers do not traditionally have voices outside of their classrooms. We sit, alone, in little rooms, studying and grading and feeling lonely. It doesn’t, and shouldn’t, have to be that way.

My last hope for you, whoever, wherever, and whenever you are, is that you’re doing good work, with your students, and that you’ve discovered that the work that you are doing is so important, so vital and so necessary that you shouldn’t keep it to yourself. The Internet won’t run out of room anytime soon.

When Robert Fulghum (http://www.robertfulghum.com/) ended Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door, he made mention of the fact that Pueblo pottery contains a particular line break in every pattern to represent that, while a particular piece might be completed, the life of the artist is not. “A ritual sign of continual possibility,” he called it (246). To model that same idea, he ended his book not with a period, but a semi-colon. I shall do the same here, but for a slightly different reason. For me, I do so as a reminder that, no matter how many words we write, speak, draw, sing, or otherwise utter, there still remains much to discuss;

Works Cited
Fulghum, Robert. Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door. New York: Ballantine Books, 1991.

Links Mentioned (or neglected) in the Podcast
A Conversation about Elgg in the Classroom
http://edtechtalk.com/node/254

Blogessor
http://blogessor.blogspot.com/

Elgg
http://www.elgg.org/

EducationBridges.net
http://educationbridges.net/

My Learning Network
http://www.bloglines.com/public/budhunt

Olde School Space
http://www.oldeschoolspace.org/

Teachers Teaching Teachers
http://www.teachersteachingteachers.org/

Will Richardson
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/

Worldbridges
http://www.worldbridges.net/

Youth Voices.net
http://www.youthvoices.net/

All music in this podcast by the group “La Grosse Couture,” via BeatPick.com (http://www.beatpick.com/).

Victoria A. Davis
Camilla, Georgia, USA
Blog: http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/

Presentation Title
“Wiki Collaboration Across the Curriculum”

Bio
Vicki Davis is a teacher and technology administrator at Westwood Schools in Camilla, Georgia. She has taught for four years at the high school and middle school level. For ten years prior, she taught professional development courses for teachers and college level adult computer literacy training. She is known for her award winning class wiki, wiki-centric classroom structure, and use of broad scope of Web 2.0 tools to improve student performance. She is a graduate of the Leadership Georgia program and graduated first in her class from Georgia Tech. She actively blogs her experiences at the Cool Cat Teacher blog and has been cited in the Boston Globe and Wired News for her work with wikis.

Description
Vicki loves it when she gets students excited! She loves it even more when she know that she has covered difficult material and the students had fun and retained the information. Vicki has become convinced that research-based think-pair-share and post lesson summarization are employed effectively whether you use paper, oral discussion, or online collaborative learning tools such as the wiki. The basic methodology (and result) is the same although the medium is different.

Last November 2005, Vicki was a scared beginner when she ventured out onto this new Internet that experts call Web 2.0. Within one month, her class wiki was named wikispace of the month and was being recognized as a model classroom for wiki use. But the most profound change was inside her classroom. Her classroom went from a challenging, rigorous curriculum to a challenging, rigorous, and fun curriculum with increased student involvement. Vicki will share what she has done with you in the hopes that you can learn more quickly than she did.

Vicki has done this in two ways: a video with show notes and a live wiki project for YOU to join in. So, if you want to learn something new (and have a sense of humor) we hope you’ll join the presentation. Vicki welcomes feedback on this blog or on her Cool Cat Teacher blog.

Video Presentation Outline:

1. Wiki Background
2. Why students need to know how to wiki
3. A brief overview of the active portion of this project
4. The pedagogical use of wikis in the classroom
5. Wiki assessment strategies
6. Common questions from school administrators

Note: To show you how rapidly things change, this presentation was finished on Sunday, October 15th and on Monday, October 16th, wikispaces has announced a new feature to help with the concurrent editing problem of wikis.

Presentation

PC users right click, Mac users control click to download for viewing …
http://k12online.wm.edu/k12wikipresentatation_LowRes.wmv 18 MB
http://k12online.wm.edu/k12wikipresentation_highres.wmv 41 MB

Supporting Links
Show Notes
http://k12online.wm.edu/K12shownotes.pdf

Wiki Grading Rubric
http://k12online.wm.edu/WikiGradingRubric.pdf

Components of an effective Web 2.0 Classroom
http://k12online.wm.edu/Web20classroom.pdf

Active Project Outline: The K12 Wiki Project
1 – Sign up to participate at the conference wiki project wiki – http://k12wiki.wikispaces.com/
Our live wiki project. Sign up and request to join the space before 8 AM EST Wednesday, October 24th. All project instructions are on the wiki home page.

2 – Team Announcements
You will have your team assignments posted on the wiki Thursday, October 26th.

3 – Wiki on your topic for up to 20 minutes
You will have until Saturday, October 28th to spend two 10 minute sessions editing your wiki. (Vicki will have volunteers on the wiki to answer your questions and help you.)

4 – Awards
Three Amazing judges, Andrea Forte (wiki researcher), Stewart Mader (wiki author), Jennifer Wagner (international collaborative teacher projects) will evaluate and judge the best wiki of this project. (See the K12wiki for their bios.)

5 – Listen in on the skypecast
Winners will be announced at the concluding skypecast (https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk=45270%29 on Monday, October 30, at 8 pm EST (October 31 at 1:00 am GMT). Some of the judges will join us and we will give you some ways that you can match your classrooms to wiki with others that match your objectives.