Wiki that I found Wikispace

I saw that there were a ton of Wiki's! I did however find one that I liked, and would really like to explore further once the class is over. With teaching and taking two classes at Lesley, I haven't had the time to "play" with some of these great sites that I've come across.
I did like that Wikispace had an audio podcast format to show you how to set up for your account. At Wikispace, you can make a website where you can create webpages and edit them using their visual editor. Another good thing is that you don't need any technical "know-how" to operate the site.
From what I have read so far about Wikispace, it's like a blog, website and online community rolled into one. There are menus for help, community, about Wikispace. I've mentioned before that I like Wikipedia, but I never even imagined the company was so expansive. I was impressed by all of the "wiki's."
http://www.wikispaces.com/site/tour#introduction

Week 3 Social Computing

I am so glad to have visited www.wikiteach.org ! It was like a lesson plan heaven, and they are all free. In our district, we are just getting Microsoft Sharepointe up and running. In this technological day and age, it would be nice to have a data bank of lesson plans instead of looking through the "old" filing cabinet. Some of my colleagues see it as one more thing to do, but I think that it is an excellent idea. We have to turn our "paper copy" lesson plans in at our library in a binder. It is so aggravating to do that. I am hoping that they will create a school folder on Sharepointe where we can submit our weekly lesson plans, and the administrators can look at them online as opposed to stopping what they are doing and head down to the library.

Wikiteach seems like it could be a big hit with educators. I already like Wikipedia(smile), even though I know that you should double check anything that you get from the site. It's just so quick, fast and "in the know!"
At first I uploaded my plan but had left the PC for a few minutes. My page was still there with the lesson on it. I hit "submit" and it said that I was successful in submitting it as a "guest user."
I didn't know how to delete it, so I edited my own post to apologize. I then re-submitted my plan, "Soda Straw Weaving", which my kids absolutely love to death!!
This is a fun, and inexpensive way to teach "modern and portable weaving." All you really have to purchase are the straws, or if you have a business partner you can get them from, do that. The yarns can be purchased from one of everyone's most favorite Mart in the world...know what I mean?
Once you get the kids into this, I can guarantee you that you will hear talking, communication and maybe even a loud voice or two, but all of them are communicating about their soda straw weaving experience. They are all on task, they readily help others, and are actively involved in the process and are proud of their results.

Topic 3

This is actually a 3 draft of my lesson. I apparently copied the link before saving it so my previous link was blank. sorry. Live and learn. smile.
Caryl
Topic 3 Wiki Lesson

Edited M&Ms Spreadsheet Leaason

I teach spreadsheet design to my 5th graders and up and thought this would be a great lesson with a bit of tweaking.

Bookmarking Lesson

I have always done a bookmarking lesson for my intermediate students (4th-6th grade) and so I have changed this around a bit to incorporate del.icio.us into the lesson. A major problem is that our district does not assign our student's emails and I would have to have them use some free email source in order for them to register and use the service. I am also a bit leary of some of the content that may cause some problems with our parents.

Mary Tidrick - Wiki

A wiki site that I liked was called Pbwiki.com. It is advertises that it is as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich to make a wiki. Actually, it was pretty easy. However, I think some of the features are confusing. If you want more features, you can pay a monthly fee for different levels.
I made a wiki to use with my lesson plan " A Wiki Story". I plan to try it with my students. The wiki is called mrstwiki and below is the web address:

Mrs. T Wiki

The address for A Wiki Story is:

A Wiki Story


I also made a wiki with Wikispaces for my Study Group. I wanted to see which one I thought would be easier to use with students and adults. It was very easy to use also. It was a little hard to get the writing in the format I wanted. I am going to share this wiki with my Study Group and see if we can put information on it to share with our faculty. I did not have to come up with a log-on or password. It will be interesting to see if my follow teachers want to use it.

Study Group 2 Wiki

Study Group 2

After reading our assignments, I feel I have a much better understanding of a wiki. I had heard about them about 3 years ago at a technology conference. I was not sure I like the fact that everyone could edit the page. I feel more comfortable with that concept today. I think wiki have a lot to offer education in the future.
Wiki seem to be free at the moment. However, blogs began that way and now their is a monthly cost depending on what feature you want.

Mary

Mary Tidrick- My Edit

I edited a lesson plan called City History, City Streets

The link to the edited lesson plan is:

City History, City Streets

Mary

Mary Tidrick - Lesson Plan

My Lesson Plan

My lesson plan on WikiTeach is called A Wiki Story. Here is the link for the lesson plan:


A Wiki Story Lesson Plan


Mary

Animal Book Reports with a Twist!

I created a lesson plan to go along with my spring animal book reports. I like to have the students obtain information not only from books, but also Internet resources. Using a social tagging account through Del.icio.us, the research experience will be greatly enhanced. Further, it will save time for both the students and me. I like the idea that I do not have to find all the sites students may need; students and their families can assist in the research process and sharing.
By the way, my WikiTeach screen name is "readingkh".

I chose to edit a lesson plan entitled Charlie and Chocolate Factory: The Chocolate Room. The lesson focuses on one chapter from this famous book. I simply added the last four extension ideas. Like someone else mentioned, I am disappointed to learn that I could not edit a link to a lesson plan. Originally, I wanted to edit a lesson plan on the Frog and Toadbook by Arnold Lobel because the lesson had been written in 1999 and the web links were outdated. I found several up-to-date links and also suggested using a Del.icio.us account to store the new links. But alas, I could not make changes or suggestions.

WikEd Wiki

What a find! WikEd discusses topics in the realms of curriculum, technology, and education reform. This wiki has information that would be helpful to teachers of all experience levels. I stumbled across it when I was looking for educational wikis. The article that caught my eye was on Wiki in a K-12 Classroom. Many topics we have discussed or will discuss in this class are mentioned on this site. Educators coming together to improve their instruction is a powerful tool. There are tons of links that could have you surfing forever into the depths of any topic.

Revised Senses Lesson

I edited a lesson for a Five Senses Introduction. It was a great lesson to start with, but I added an extension to broaden the age and use of the base lesson. The extension called for the teacher to allow students to use only one of their senses to determine what the object was. This could be hard with some objects, so specific objects may need to be used. In the end, students would see how hard it is for just one sense to do all of the work, or how important each and every one of our senses is.
I thought it was really neat how I could actually edit this lesson plan for all to see. This is my first experience with a Wiki and I was apprehensive at first. However, I now see how so much more information could be shared on a site like this. Collaboration is an important part of our society these days, and social computing is a great outlet for this to happen. In the social computing article, it mentioned that most of these tools are free. This should encourage schools to take advantage of the learning opportunities available because of the technology. There is no financial excuse here!

Environmental Observations Lesson Plan

I created a lesson on Environmental Observations for my Ecology and Ecosystems unit. Observations are such an important part of science and are stressed in our lessons. Students get to observe various organisms in our classrooms, but I think they need to learn how to observe how they interact with organisms everyday. Using Flickr, students can post their photo observations and written analysis for others to read and comment on. Social computing is all about collaboration and the sharing of ideas. This lesson allows students to share ideas freely in a safe group environment created by the teacher online.

WikiJazz

WkikMusic

I was persuing Wikipedia and found some great information about Scott Joplin, famous Ragtime composer. This was a very useful link as my students study jazz over the course of their 3 years in Middle school. I think the information is of good quality and the students can gather a unique history of ragtime and jazz in general.

WikiTeach

I found only one site under the keyword Spanish in WikiTeach; it was on tapas and was quite interesting. That is the site I chose to edit.

My lesson plan is Spanish Surrealists: Miro and Dali. I used del.ic.ious by entering the necessary websites needed to complete the assignments. It was very easy and I found it useful. I plan to use it for additional assignments.

Editing a Lesson Plan in WikiTeach.org

Hello

I scrutinized this lesson to create a pie chart in Excel and was only able to find one thing that needed correcting. It was a grammar mistake on the last step. Oh, well, that's collaboration!

Wiki's for Businesses

I ran accross this site which is commercial in nature. It allow businesses to create "secure" wikis. I checked out some of background info provided and it appears that some businesses are creating wikis to cut down on the amount of email and for project teams to collaborate on projects.

It's interesting that they feel they have to go to commercial sites since there are free wikis that offer password protection? Perhaps the security is marginal on the free sites.

Peanut Butter Wiki

While checking out my Google hits for "wiki" I kept coming back to one labelled pbwiki which allows anyone to create a free wiki, easily. There is a link for educators which offers safeguards that are important for any classroom-based wiki, such as the option to make the site public or private, to lock pages and to control the access to pages. The design and layout are clean and easy to read. The examples on the education home page include an elementary classroom, and a freshman english course at Penn State. This eliminated much of the intimidation I've felt when thinking about creating a wiki.

Karen

Wikiteach - DV Toolkit

One of the greatest challenges media professionals face is the incredible speed at which the technology advances. In addition to the speed of advancement is the constant demand for creativity and quality from the client side. The only solution to this is for the students to develop a strategy for keeping up with the innovations. Social book marking is a way to connect to the state-of-the-art and the talents who know the technology. Click on the title above to see the lesson plan.

To see a lesson plan I modified click here

Wiki for WordPress

I've recently published a blog site using shareware called WordPress. The good news: It's a PHP system that's growing in popularity everyday. The bad news: it's hard to find reliable technical support for it if you run into a problem. At least that is what I believed before this lesson got me searching for a wiki. If you'd like to see how I'm using Wordpress Click Here. Let me know if you see any problems. Please mention your browser and computer platform too. Thanks - dj