Teaching writing, teaching life…

Co-presenting with Bee Dieu for Blogging for Beginners, Aaron Campbell said:

“Over time…
Authoritarian and Vertical Classrooms
Create Authoritarian and Vertical Minds”

(click here to watch their wonderful presentation on “Involving students in Blogging“)

Having watched _{(click on the grey triangle over the image below to see the video)}:

Web 2.0 The Machine is Us/ing Us (4:31 mins)

by Digital Ethnography (a working group of Kansas State University students and faculty dedicated to exploring and extending the possibilities of digital ethnography, led by Professor Wesch) today,…

I wonder whether we writing teachers can keep denying that…

“Over time…
teaching unilinear writing, fixed in time
creates unilinear thinkers, unwilling to question
and mistrustful of lifelong learning”.

Gladys (rethinking my teaching practices !)

_{NOTE: first time embedding a video in one of my blogs!}

Wikis as collaboration tools

Educared@ndonos: el wiki y la colaboración

The document linked above reports on a project I have implemented during this school year, integrating a wiki (hosted at http://theoryofeducation.pbwiki.com/) into the curriculum of “Theory of Education”, a subject I teach at a private teacher’s training college (all lessons are held in English, to favour the trainees acquisition of the foreign language). I wrote it in Spanish to submit it to a competition held by Educar-Intel. (don’t look for my name among the winners! )

The class was made up by 23 first-year students, who had just entered the institution. We met only once a week for 80 minutes, and the school had no access to computers.

By integrating a wiki into our curriculum tools (adapting a writing task assigned on previous school years) , I aimed at:

• transforming my f2f course into a blended course
• fostering group cohesion
• promoting peer collaboration
• introducing teacher trainees into the educational potential of new technologies

You may prefer to have a look at the slidesI created to go with the report. Even if you cannot understand Spanish, the images on slides #3 and 12 can help you see the effect on wiki integration on the student’s perception of the writing task.

As indicated in the report, the experience was really positive. I’m determined to repeat it again in future school years!

Gladys

Wikis III: WYSIWYG and more

Just two comments on wikis:

1. Last week I was introduced to wikispaces by Daf, and so I saw a wiki that accepts WYSIWYG code with my own eyes  . That encouraged me to try a wiki, and I’ve started two spaces: “tips and hints for my computer” and “what people say about me“… I’m still not sure of what to think of them, and have had trouble inserting tables, but it’s a start… 

I’ve decided to make them public and see what happens… Exploring seems the key to learning, particularly online!

2. The IT Guy at techlearning.com today recommends MediaWiki as “open source wiki software … for school districts to install and use”… I must look into this one day!

One final note: looking at the preview, I can see the second point on my list looks like a speech bubble with a grey background… It’d be lovely to have a clue about how  I did such a thing!    

Wikis II: 2 versions of Wikipedia?

Reading the supplement on technology published by “Clarín” newspaper last Jan 04, I learn there’ll soon be two versions of Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org): one where pages can be semi-protected and new contributions will be moderated by the page administrators, and a new one, which will be “static”, and whose contents will only be updated by the site administrators. It seems I’m not alone in feeling threatened as a writer when using a wiki!

Originally posted at my LiveJournal (now closed) on Jan 10, 2006