Luke Walker
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
http://www.tiged.org
Presentation Title
“TIGed Basics: A Beginners Guide to Social Networking in the Classroom(Basic)”
Bio
Luke is the Education Program Manager at TakingITGlobal, a Canadian charity focused on empowering young people to learn about and take action on global social issues. Luke has presented at education-related conferences around North America and throughout the world.
Description
Luke will lead viewers through the basics of TakingITGlobal’s TIGed.org environment, a secure virtual classroom and collaboration space that focuses on global education. TIGed combines blogs, podcasts, photo sharing, mapping tools, and live and asynchronous discussion tools with TakingITGlobal.org’s thriving community of 125,000 young global leaders. The presentation will be appropriate for those who are new to TIGed, or new to social networking altogether. All participants will be provided with access to TIGed, and will be challenged to find and share creative uses of the tool.
Presentation (all files should be linked from index but are listed here as a back-up)
http://k12online.wm.edu/tiged/tiged/index.html
http://k12online.wm.edu/tiged/tiged/tig.html
http://k12online.wm.edu/tiged/tiged/introtiged.html
http://k12online.wm.edu/tiged/tiged/signup.html
http://k12online.wm.edu/tiged/tiged/maps.html
http://k12online.wm.edu/tiged/tiged/chat.html
http://k12online.wm.edu/tiged/tiged/collab.html
http://k12online.wm.edu/tiged/tiged/tigeddb.html
http://k12online.wm.edu/tiged/tiged/edcentral.html
It all looks very good with easy ways to create and collaborate, but there are free tools such as Think.com and Imbee.com both of which I’ve used with success with one of my classes. Given the difficulty of persuading some headteachers/principals to go for social networking at all, I’m just wondering how many will be willing to pay for the service too…
Hey Doug,
A couple different ways to reply…
On the topic of being free:
1) TakingITGlobal.org is free–and while it is geared toward individual youth, there are some really good examples of how teachers have used it (including Robert Karulas’ upcoming presentation on podcasting.) We developed TIGed (which is not free–although you have free access through this conference) to help better suit some of the needs of the education market.
2) Thematic classrooms–classrooms that we’ve loaded with content on different topics, in partnership with some really cool organizations like Global Kids, are free and provide you access to the same toolset is a ‘normal’ TIGed membership (without the ability to create your own classrooms from scratch).
3) We would never let the fee get in the way of having a class use our tools. The fee, by the way, is $30 per teacher or $195 per school (unlimited classes and students with either option). If that’s a problem, you can e-mail us and we’ll figure something out–right now, we’re more concerned with getting our tools out there than in our long-term sustainability (although that’s also a concern, and will become a major one as we grow). We’re also very willing to provide teachers who are committing a lot time and effort to our community with free access (and other incentives as we can manage them) in return.
TIGed charges a fee for a couple of reasons–one of which is that it actually helps us ensure that teachers take us seriously and use the tool, rather than signing up and never touching it again, skewing our metrics. While we’d love to have a massive number of regsitered users, the goal is to have all those users using the site. By charging a fee, we’re also able to provide a lot more support than we would otherwise be able to. We’re a very small charitable organization, and don’t really have the capacity to do that without supporting it somehow, unlike some of the other SNSes out there (like think.com, which is a project of the Oracle Education Foundation).
In terms of comparing TIG/TIGed to think.com and other SNSes:
You’re right–convincing some people to use SNSes in schools seems like a losing battle. This is where we see a lot of value in TIG–you can pitch it as an SNS, or as a tool for global education, or service learning, and on and on and on. In the end, the fact that we are what is now known as a social networking service is not our goal but our means to our goal (and our SNS or online community is only one of many projects–check out our annual report from about.takingitglobal.org to see all the different ways we’re engaging young people around the world). We’re aiming to help young people build their capacity to make a change in the world in a new and innovative way–and the community we’ve developed of over 125,000 young global leaders presents a really cool opportunity for students (and teachers, too) to get inspired to take action on major social issues.
Luke, do you have an audio or video presentation file? I am linking up presos into a conference podcast feed and want to include yours if one is available. Thanks!
Hi Luke,
I’ve seen you at the Leading Learning Conference and presentations at ECOO etc. I think people would really appreciate what you are doing if you explain a little more about the origins of TIG as a youth orginazation and some of the other areas that you are working with students from around the world.
Take Care!