Learning from a 10 year old June 19, 2008
Posted by Wendy Wolfe in Educational Resources, Friday Five, Webbased tools, Wikis.Tags: Polls, Vizu, Wikis
1 comment so far
I love finding new things – this time I found a new thing on the wiki designed by one of my friend/colleague’s daughters, Elise. She is ten years old and a little while ago, decided she would create her own wiki. My friend says, “She’s working on it all the time” and that he’s really not sure what it is all about but he is really proud of her and her efforts and yesterday he had the opportunity to share her wiki with me. She is using Wetpaint, the one wiki program I haven’t investigated very much, though I know it is usually listed as the third in the trio of wikis, PBwiki, Wikispaces and Wetpaint. I know that educators have special opportunities with PBwiki and Wikispaces but at first glance, I didn’t see anything obvious for educators with Wetpaint – perhaps an option appears when you are going through the registration process.
When investigating Elise’s wiki, I learned about a new “quick poll” tool that she uses to survey her visitors’ interests. The tool is, Vizu and it offers users the opportunity to, “Add an interactive poll to a web page or blog post in seconds. Customize the look to match your site.” Vizu also has a “Power Poll” feature which allows one to, “Make polling a feature of your site or blog. Automatically rotate numerous, professional looking polls. Add your own polls.” I am thinking about many ways this little tool (or one like it as I am sure there are many) could be used in the classroom… opinions on current events, favorite character polls, what do you think will happen next, what do you think the outcome of this experiment will be… I think I’m going to spend my Friday Five exploring Vizu, putting one up on my wiki as a practice, and dreaming a little about where quick/informal polls would fit well into my curriculum.
With that, I am off to work more on the PowerPoint game project, I achieved success with VBA at least on the PC side of PowerPoint so that is encouraging! Maybe next week I’ll be luck enough to be able to say I am finished with the project!? (I probably shouldn’t write that but I am going to dream anyway!) I hope you have a great day and weekend.
ps – I’ll ask Elise if I can share her wiki with you and will post a link if she says yes.
Summer Technology Symposium Preview May 16, 2008
Posted by Wendy Wolfe in Educational Resources, Friday Five, Toondoo, Webbased tools, Wikis.add a comment
I am so excited about the opportunity our staff has this summer – to spend four mornings learning more about PowerPoint’s capabilities, Web 2.0 tools, podcasting, movie making, games, and more! Today’s Friday Five invites you to take five minutes to check out some student projects that showcase some of the things we will be learning about this summer.
1. Working with podcasts and making movies. For this assignment, students (seniors) took one of President Bush’s Saturday Morning Radio Addresses and turned it into a movie. For many of them, it was their first experience making a movie. A works cited list was submitted as part of the assignment. Two of the students submitted their work to YouTube, one of them is linked here.
2. Use cartooning and music videos to tell stories, teach about Supreme Court cases, whatever you want them to. Here you will find examples of cartoons and music videos designed to teach about Landmark Supreme Court cases – students created them then posted them to the class wiki to showcase their work.
(The music videos play when you click the play button on the green screen.)
3. An example of a digital flowchart – while this was for the Crusades, the possibilities are endless.
And we will do so much more! It will be an exciting week.
“Share-ability” October 24, 2007
Posted by Wendy Wolfe in Tools, Webbased tools, Wikis.1 comment so far
So my students are viewing each other’s shows on Ancient Greece which they created using Zoho Show and google.docs presentation tool. They are wonderful from a share-ability perspective. Everyone can easily publish their work to our class wiki, and then can view the work of their friends and classmates.
I think, in time, as Google works out some glitches in their new presentation program, I will shift from Zoho to Google, it seems to be easier for students to work with at home.
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Wiki, Wiki, PBwiki! April 30, 2007
Posted by Wendy Wolfe in Wikis.add a comment
In a usual week, I plan on writing a spot on a tech tool of the week each Tuesday, well, to start things off, even though it is not yet Tuesday, I wanted to share how impressed I am with the new changes going on at PBwiki! Last spring my juniors were studying China and I had attended a couple of workshops that had sparked my interest in trying to use wiki creation with my students. I had no idea what I was doing, and it was the first time in my life that I stood in front of my class and said, “I don’t know how to do this but we are going to give it a shot.” I also said they would figure out things that I did not know how to do and if I asked them, would they please show me. They investigated many aspects of China, all of their own choosing. I did not have a preliminary set of assessment guidelines, we just gave it a go. At the end of the semester, many of the students cited designing the wiki as a highlight of the class.
We used PBwiki, it sounded straightforward and we were able to figure it out easily but since last spring, PBwiki has made some impressive improvements. Their design tools are far more user friendly and there are no longer ads on educational PBwikis. Well done!
If you are thinking about using a wiki with your students, I highly recommend checking out PBwiki, in fact, you can check out the PBwiki tour by clicking here.
Class created notes compilation – choose-your-own-adventures – class created travel guides – multi-author stories – a sharing space for other student created content – The possibilities are endless…
Thank you, PBwiki for your education-friendly wikis! 
