How Do I Even Wiki?

For this blog, I browsed an interesting website about teachers using wikis. It explained wikis, how to use them, and how they can be useful in the real world and in the classroom. Below is a link to the website:
http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/

This website was useful for so many different reasons. For real beginners, it started off talking about what exactly wikis are, and how to use them. Wikis are like a learning community that can be accessed and changed by anyone (or whoever the creator wants it to be available to). They are a great way for students (and teachers too!) to collaborate and work together on any given project or just to study. The website elaborates a lot on how to use them most effectively and how they can be useful for anyone and everyone. However, because the site is called TeachersFirst, it mostly focuses on how teachers and students use them for collaborative learning experiences and sharing teaching advice and ideas. It goes subject to subject and gives specific examples of how a teacher would facilitate a wiki in many different ways for each. It then goes through many different topics that pertain specifically and solely to the teacher. This entire site is a fantastic resource for people like myself that feel like they are reading a different language when they encounter anything remotely technological. Even though this class has helped a lot, technology still scares me, and this site walks through wikis almost like it is for 5 year olds. This is 100% ok with me, because technology makes me feel likes 5 year old. I would recommend this site to almost anyone using wiki for any reason. Not only does it tremendously help beginners like me, but it also gives great ideas for seasoned veterans that know wikis like the back of their hand! This site was awesome to read.

Website Evaluation

This activity was quite useful in helping me learn to evaluate websites more effectively. I now have a checklist and know what to look for in websites for my students. In the past I would have been rather reckless in finding websites for students. I had no idea what to look for in a good website and how to know if a website was even remotely reliable or just trying to sell me a product or look good and flashy. It took me awhile to find the author, and start date, and last revised date, and other important things like that. I had no idea these were so vital in a good website. How can I trust a site that hasn't been revised in 5 years? In the future I will be much more careful when looking for valid websites, especially when it pertains to my students.

Technology and History!?

There's this stigma with History classes that you can simply give lecture after lecture and powerpoint after powerpoint and that will suffice for the kids. This simply will not do. Many classes have been implementing technological advances rather easily for quite some time. Computers and iPads have been used for module type activities in math. Reading and English (as well as Math) lend themselves easily to using SmartBoards and other interactive boards. Students can come to the board and write their answers and erase correct each other and it can be fun. History, however, seems to be stuck in the Stone Age. It is so refreshing to see Blogs like HistoryTech by Glenn Wiebe which chronicles all kinds of technology he uses in his History classes.

 

Wiebe uses tools such as Google Classroom to digitally share and upload information for his whole classroom. He is able to share YouTube videos and resources as well as have students collaborate together as a class. He uses podcasts to make the information less dull and Tumblr to encourage more collaboration and interaction with ease. My favorite piece of technology that Wiebe used is something called Zaption. I had never heard of Zaption before reading this blog, but it is fascinating. Basically, Zaption is a way to take a YouTube clip, or other video clip of some sort, and add interactive pieces to it. You can add multiple choice questions, text boxes, drawings, and many more things I’m sure he didn't even think of. The students will be much more engaged while watching these informational videos. From my experience, when a teacher assigns a video to watch for class, I immediately go brain-dead. My head shuts off and my mind wanders. These interactive pieces would keep me interested and awake for a lot longer, and can even be kind of fun if done right.

Again, I find it very refreshing to see someone successfully incorporating technology into a class like History, which many students find extremely boring. This helped me realize that even I can find a way to integrate technology into my classroom, as tech-illiterate as I am.

(Not So) Great Expectations

Coming into this class, I was a bit scared. I have always considered myself to have a very low intelligence about technology. I tend to not give myself enough credit, but I know I'm not as tech savvy as most. I am especially illiterate as far as working with Mac computers and other Apple products. Truthfully, I was dreading this class and wanted no part of it.

However, after being in here for about three weeks, I feel a lot more comfortable with computers. Mr. Beard runs the class at a slow and steady pace that doesn't completely bore me, but helps me keep up. I feel like I am learning a lot, and, more importantly, I am learning enough to be able to use some of this technology to be a better teacher and further my students' educational opportunities.

By the end of this class I hope to be able to consider myself "tech-savvy". I am not sure right now what that means, but I hope to find out. I want to feel comfortable at a computer, and I want to feel like I am able to fix small problems if and when they arise. This class no longer scares me, because I know that even if I am not totally comfortable with technology right now, I will get there, and I will know all that I need to know.