Feature wiki – Preston Girls’ Secondary College

Posted on November 29, 2008 by slav

On their arrival at Preston Girls’ Secondary College earlier this year, teacher librarians Judith Way and Reina Phung grappled to get a handle on the curriculum requirements of the college. Job-sharing the 1.0 position, with no support staff, Judith and Reina found it difficult to find the time to meet with subject coordinators to ask for their input. Aware of the few audio visual resources and a collection that needed updating, they decided to set up a ‘Curriculum Audit’ wiki.

Not a link, just a screenshot of one of the pages from the wiki

It was decided that the wiki was to be kept private, for the use and eyes of the school staff only. Staff were emailed an introduction and request to contribute to the wiki. The email contained a word document attachment that included detailed instructions and screenshots on how to contribute to the wiki. Staff were then asked to contribute their thoughts on a number of questions:

Do you need library resources for this topic/subject?
What type of resources do you need? Please be explicit.
Are you happy with the resources the library already has?
What resources would you liked to be purchased or discovered?
Do you have research skills embedded into the topic?
Would you like to work with us to embed research skills into the topic?
If you’d like help, when can we meet? Please nominate a time/date.
How else can we help you in the teaching and learning process?

Some staff not only responded quickly and in some detail, but were enthused about the possibilities of wikis. One teacher, Les Kyle, proceeded to quickly create her own extremely detailed wiki for her VCAL class; the whole curriculum, topics and links to resources (with some contributions from Judith and Reina). This wiki was kept private within Preston Girls’ (using an email to the students’ email address inviting them to join the wiki) as full student names appeared on the wiki and discussions between teacher and students took place. Judith and Reina were proud to think that their Curriculum Audit wiki was the catalyst for Les’s fabulous wiki.

However, many staff did not know what a wiki was, and some had trouble even logging on. The ideal situation would have been an introductory session during a Curriculum Day for those interested/needing guidance. However as all Curriculum Days had been allocated to specific topics (Literacy), Judith and Reina continued to work one-to-one with interested teachers. Judith and Reina believe that something like the SLAV Web 2.0 course for teachers would be terrific, as they often felt that the majority of the teaching staff would benefit from the introduction to the Web 2.0 tools out there that can enhance teaching and learning.

The idea that wikis were the ideal tool for student/student and student/teacher (and teacher/teacher) collaboration was introduced to teachers. That students projects could be completed in teams, and the teacher automatically alerted by email to when contributions had been added. Students taking full responsibility for their own learning becomes apparent when those with access to the wiki can see (and also have email alerts) who has contributed what to the wiki. The way discussions and comments are structured means that students have to think about their responses, rather than perhaps plagiarise by cutting and pasting.

The bonus was that discussions about wikis and blogs now regularly take place and teachers who have not yet made a contribution to the wiki promise to do so when the VCE classes finish. The new ICT Coordinator has begun his own blog. And the teachers who contributed to the wiki will have the best resourced subjects in the school!

The only problem that Judith and Reina found was that the initial wiki grew so large that it had to be split into two; years 7-10 and years 11-12.

Storyz

Posted on November 18, 2008 by slav

Storyz is a Web 2.0 tool that enables users to create and share their own stories. The fun part is that you can add text, images and video and invite friends (or colleagues or in the case of students, class mates) to view and even add to your story. Students could use Storyz to create their own e-book.

Storyz homepage

Your stories can be kept totally private, or shared with whoever you wish. Once shared with specific people, your story can be added to. This could be an interesting way to write a class story, or for students to collaborate with each other. Storyz can be accessed online or through mobile phones.

Storyz could be a great tool for developing writers to upload their multimedia stories and seek feedback from selected sources.

Feature wiki – Samaritan Catholic College, Preston

Posted on November 8, 2008 by slav

Lynda Santolin, ILC Co-ordinator at Preston’s Samaritan Catholic College has spent time since completing the SLAV Web 2.0 course earlier this year developing numerous tools for teaching and learning. She has also led a staff PD introducing them to the world of blogs and wikis.

A Book Club blog, Staff Book blog, del.icio.us site, Rollyo account and online image generators have all been tools that Lynda has introduced. But she feels her greatest success was with wikis. ‘I created a wiki for staff to use. I think it has great potential for staff in faculties, or across campuses or even across schools, to share resources and planning. I also set up the Shared Stories Anthology wiki – which is run across 8 schools – the school coordinators compile student writing/visual arts pieces on a theme and publish and ‘book launch’ it each year. The wiki has enabled us to share:

Planning
Practicalities and pitfalls
Logistics
Launch details
Post-launch’

Shared stories anthology wiki

Lynda has developed a further two wikis for teaching and learning; Year 7 Ancient history and Year 8 Middle Ages. ‘In each of those, I had an information focus, but then something interactive – ‘test yourself’ type of thing. Our team put those websites together, I made the wikis, and the kids were engrossed with them and said they had ‘fun’. One example is this one interactive game to dress a knight for battle by answering a few
questions.’

Middle Ages

She continues, ‘I also had a discussion forum, where I tried to ask ‘thinking’ questions, for example, Would you have liked to have lived in Ancient Times? Why/why not? (Their responses were really interesting and often funny ‘No, because I wouldn’t be able to play computer games’). The discussion posts where each student needed to be members of the wikispace to respond. And from memory, they had to reply to an invitational email to do that. That was a lot of work and effort!’

Ancient history wiki

Lynda explains she is ‘finding wikis – wikispaces.com (it is free and the educational membership is advertisement-free) – easier to handle than blogs. Blogs are hard to do if you are trying to give many people a voice (page). I wouldn’t do it again as a blog, but I’d try wikis.’

Lynda has been very happy with wikispaces.com as she feels that it has great guides and support for teachers. She recommends using wikis over blogs as they are easy to use. She suggests:

‘Before using wikis with students:

Have a ‘play’ by creating your own personal/professional wiki. Learn.
Wikispaces = great help/tutorials (see above)
Know about Netsafety, Copyright and other cyber issues
Show students: examples/models
Use old technology – pen & paper! – to plan
Plan your ‘discussion’ to encourage higher order thinking and metacognition’

Lynda also suggests that: ‘Students need to know practicalities, pitfalls. For example:

Uploading content/feedback comments is NOT ‘chat’ – stay focused
Never reveal your or another person’s entire name, contact details, school
The wiki/blog does not replace homework (can’t be an excuse not to do homework!)’

Lynda also addressed other issues such as Netsafety, Copyright and other cyber issues. She says to ‘familiarise yourself with Working with the Web and to have dialogue with the Assistant Principal and other relevant co-coordinators/staff.’

Overall, Lynda has had great success with the wiki, but explains that the ‘practicalities and pitfalls of wikis and blogs include:

Being time-consuming, so has to be suited to the educational project – worthwhile/rewarding
It gets less tricky as you get more proficient – there is light at the end of the tunnel!
You still have to constantly monitor it and moderate comments (all sent to your email inbox)
Suggest: set a start and end date for the wiki
It’s easier to create the wiki with another person – solo is hard but still possible…
Take small steps and start small!’

Lynda says that the SLAV Web 2.0 course gave her ‘the skills, knowledge and experience to participate in the Web 2.0 world, and I love the multi-literacies, communities, collaboration and peering.’

Thanks to Lynda for sharing her thoughts and hard work and congratulations on the success of all your Web 2.0 tools, particularly the wiki.

Zotero

Posted on November 4, 2008 by slav

A new way to research? Zotero is a revolutionary Mozilla Firefox (an alternative web browser to Internet Explorer) extension that helps users ‘collect, manage and cite’ research sources.

With the results of a recent survey where 49% of Cambridge students admitted plagiarism, that sounds fantastic. How does it work?

The Zotero website says that it:

‘automatically captures citation of information from web pages
has a playlist like library that keeps a record of saved searches
saves records and notes in many languages
integrates with Microsoft Office, WordPress and other blogging software
has formatted citation export
stores web pages, PDFs, files, images, links and other attachments.’

Like Diigo, you can create ‘sticky note’ annotations that ‘stick’ onto the webpage you are using. The Zotero website explains how to create bibliographies; ‘For example, you can drag and drop references into any text field as either HTMLor plain text. You can also print bibliographies directly from Zotero or copy them to your clipboard. In addition, MS Word and OpenOffice plugins offer more precise control for integrating bibliographic information in your writing projects.’

Zotero provides a lot of information about how to use it as a research tool. There are screencasts that give demonstrations of how to use Zotero, as well as lots of links that explain just about everything you’ll need to know. Once downloaded, the Zotero icon lives in the bottom right-hand corner of the Firefox window. Just click on the Zotero icon when you want to use it. With the click of the mouse, Zotero saves the bibliographic information of a website to file.

Zotero in action

Zotero can also be used with Netscape Navigator (no link as Netscape are no longer developing their product) and Flock web browsers as well as Firefox. Zotero 1.0 is the current version, but when version 2.0 is released, it will allows users to share collections, notes and documents, allowing better collaboration. Although Zotero is downloaded to a particular computer rather than generating a user login, it can be used on multiple computers. Version 2 should enable user logins for better portability.

Zotero really is an amazing tool for those who want to organise their research, searches or topics. It could be the new way to take notes and to teach students how to notetake online! Also a wonderful tool for anyone doing graduate or post graduate studies.

Zoho Notebook

Posted on October 29, 2008 by slav

If you create a lot of documents, or want to collaborate with colleagues, Zoho has a fabulous tool called Zoho Notebook. The idea behind it is that Notebook acts as your complete online record of tasks; you can embed content of any type from multiple applications and share the whole Notebook or just a page or two with others (or not, if you don’t want to). Users are able to create content as well, including text, audio, images and video. Amongst other things, you can clip webpages (and then continue to use the webpages interactively, not just see a screenshot), draw flowcharts and import Powerpoint presentations and other documents. Zoho Chat is embedded into Notebook for quick communication with collaborators. Zoho Notebook is your one stop shop for creating records that embed multiple applications. You can even sign into Zoho Notebook with your Google or Yahoo ID. Here’s a notebook I prepared earlier…

Zoho Notebook example

Google has a similar product, Google Notebook. If you use iGoogle, Google Notebook may be your best bet. But comparing the two, it seems that Google Notebook has far less functionality that that of Zoho Notebook, which is unusual knowing how well Google does most things. Have a look at both to see which application suits your needs best.

Uses of Zoho Notebook could include digital portfolios for students and even a personal portfolio for teachers for annual reviews.

Zoho Notebook has to be one of the most exciting Web 2.0 tools around. Have a look at the demonstration video for yourself. Zoho have a number of tools in their suite, most are free but some business applications only allow limited numbers of users before you must pay a subscription fee. However, the tools are definitely worth investigating!

Note: You may have Microsoft’s OneNote as part of your Office 2007 suite. OneNote is similar to both Zoho Notebook and Google Notebook and definitely worth a play if you have a few minutes.

Diigo

Posted on October 15, 2008 by slav

Diigo (pronounced Deego) is a Web 2.0 tool that lets users bookmark, highlight and add sticky notes to web pages. You can add and share (or not share if you don’t want to) annotations and get recommendations from other users. You are able to publish easily from Diigo to your blog or email and all references will automatically appear. That’s a huge bonus in this day of plagiarism. Diigo even call their tools ‘the best companion for online research’ and that’s a big call. Is it warranted?

Diigo

The Diigo blog states ‘We are happy to announce the release of Diigo Educator Accounts, a suite of features that makes it incredibly easy for teachers to get their entire class of students or their peers started on collaborative research using Diigo’s powerful web annotation and social bookmarking technology.’ You do have to apply to Diigo for an educator account upgrade and it can take up to 48 hours for them to process your application (you have to fill out how/why you want to use Diigo in your school).

Diigo has to be downloaded to your toolbar, but it is a very quick process. Diigo says, ‘Once approved for a Diigo Educator Account:

A teacher can create student accounts for an entire class with just a few clicks (and student email addresses are optional for account creation)
Students of the same class are automatically set up as a Diigo group so they can start using all the benefits that a Diigo group provides, such as group bookmarks and annotations, and group forums.
To protect the privacy of students, student accounts have special settings which only allow their teachers and classmates to contact them and access their personal profile information.
Ads presented to student account users are limited to education-related sponsors.’

Sounds like it’s worth a look and a trial with a class. Anything that helps students research and acknowledge sources is worth pursuing. Have a look at the video that explains how Diigo works: How to use Diigo. And thanks to John Pearce of Salty Solutions for this guide to Diigo.

Working Together 2 Make a Difference Program

Posted on October 7, 2008 by slav

Jenny Luca, the Head of Information Services at Toorak College in Mt. Eliza is part of an inspiring project that aims to change lives for the better. Jenny writes, ‘Angela and Laura Stockman from New York State and I are working together to make a difference. We have created a ning site to encourage people to join us to collaborate to raise funds for worthy causes in the lead up to the festive season. Here is a link to a blog post I wrote about it.

Working together 2 make a difference

‘We would love to see Australian educators join the ning site and help their students to see the difference that can be made when we pool our efforts and set out to do something good for others. Angela sent out the message below to people in her network in the United States. It explains the project and its motivation very well so I thought I would replicate it here. I hope you will consider showing this to your staff and joining the effort.’

Angela Stockman writes, ‘Last year my daughter Laura began an online service project called Twenty Five Days to Make a Difference. Her premise was to promote service work by doing small things to make a difference throughout the year in her community. Blogging about them was her way of encouraging others to join her. To date, nearly forty thousand people have visited her blog, and hundreds of individuals, schools, and teachers have supported her work and begun their own projects as well. We’ve learned that blogging inspires our eleven year old to give back to her own community while forming safe and rewarding relationships online. We’ve also learned that the web is a powerful place for kids to do authentic and meaningful work when they are monitored by responsible adults.

25 days to make a difference

‘This year, Laura is joining forces with Victorian teacher librarian Jenny Luca to launch a global effort. Jenny is a member of an international PLP community led by Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum Beach. Jenny approached Laura last year and asked her to Skype into her Melbourne classroom so that her students could collaborate with Laura. Our friendship has grown from here.

‘Working Together 2 Make a Difference is an online community administered by Jenny and myself. Teachers and students from all over the world are invited to join this space and share what they are doing to make a difference in their own communities. Doing so will enable teachers and kids to network with others around the globe, support each other’s service efforts, and witness what happens when everyone works together “to make a difference.” Those who join will have tremendous opportunity to teach their students about internet safety, powerful ways to use the web, how a ning works, and what it means to make a difference locally and globally.

‘Please consider inviting your teachers and students to join us, and invite anyone else who might be interested in doing so. Feel free to contact me for more information or with any questions that you might have! Thanks. Angela.’

Twitter – a quick communication tool

Posted on September 27, 2008 by slav

Twitter is a ‘micro-blogging’ tool that lets you send and receive short messages. Tweets, or messages, contain no more than 140 characters including punctuation and spaces, so messages have to be short and sweet. The information you send in your message is meant to answer the question, ‘What are you doing?’

: Twitter

You can invite contacts to join Twitter and you can decide who can read your updates. Your updates can be displayed on your Twitter homepage, sent via email, instant messaging, RSS, (SMS but this is currently only available in USA, Canada, UK and India) and to Facebook pages. You can also set Twitter to ‘quiet time’ when you don’t want to be interrupted, or you’re just sick of being able to be contacted all of the time.

Twitter could be a useful tool for colleagues working together in different locations, or for students collaborating on projects. Other applications such as authoring tools, mashups, search engines and voice to Twitter (Twitterfone) have been developed to complement Twitter. However, not all of the applications have been devised by the people behind Twitter. The Twitter Blog is a useful tool that lists a range of Twitter applications. The blog keeps up to date with what’s hot and it also provides a dictionary of ‘Twitter lingo’.

School Library Association of Victoria

Tag Archives: Collaboration