“Not another wiki” was a comment I heard recently while listening to a group of inspiring educators on Plurk Radio.  It was delivered in a tone which suggested this person had ‘done’ wikis ‘to death’ and was ready to move on.  It brought home to me the diverse range of skill, understanding and experience ‘out there’ amongst educators.

My reality is quite different.  Most of my colleagues have never created a wiki.  I’m sure there are many other teachers out there who don’t really have an understanding of wikis beyond wikipedia and have never really thought about classroom applications because they don’t really ‘get it.’

The power of the wiki

I think wikis have huge potential in the classroom.  They are fantastic tools for sharing information and building knowledge.  They are also versatile presentation vehicles.  Indeed,  the list of things I have learned from my current wiki experiment grows daily and highlights the learning possibilities for students.

What I have learned…(so far)

• How to embed a webpage into a wiki:  Thanks to the Getting Tricky With Wikis wiki!  This makes web pages more accessible and user-friendly, both important considerations for students.
• How to access and use databases such as Press Display to facilitate students’ learning.  Many large local libraries probably subscribe to this database.  Mine does (CCLC) but you have to be a member to access it.  I used this to add a newspaper article, including tasks, to my wiki.
• How to use Glogster to build the Useful Online Resources page in my wiki.  This provided a vibrant, visually appealling vehicle to highlight learning tools available to students.  (I can’t draw so this sort of creativity is really important to me.)
• Read Write Think provides an excellent array of graphic organizers.
• Internet Archive is an excellent resource for educators.  I found some useful public domain audio books here and added them to my wiki so that students can access them for our theme study, ‘Future Worlds’
• The State Library of Victoria’s, Ergo site is an amazing resource that is going to prove very useful over the years.  A visit to the essay writing skills page is a must for teachers and students everywhere.
• How to embed an audio file into a wiki:  This proved to be the trickiest!  Thanks to a twitterer I discovered Divshare and worked out how to do the embedding myself (with a little help from an edublogger post, of course!).

Now, that’s a lot of learning for one little wiki!  Hopefully, my students will gain as much from their own wiki experience in the 2009 school year.

I would love to hear from others with positive wiki experiences.  Please share a link.

I do get excited when I discover tools that are so nifty I just want to use them straight away!  I discovered this one via Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day.  Visitors are invited to add themselves to a map and include a message and photo if they choose.  They can also provide an email address.  What a great way to build a community!  My guest map is below.  Please join it and say Hi:

My exploration of blogging and other Web 2.0 tools began in earnest during April this year. At that point my enthusiasm saw me spending most of my spare time signing up for and experimenting with tool after tool, following lists compiled by Web 2.0 pioneers and reading every educational blog I could find. What a journey! Now that I have recovered from the ‘dizzy heights’ of discovery I finally feel ready to share a few of my Top 3 Learning Gems:

· The Google Tools: I’m talking Gmail, igoogle, Google Reader, Google Docs and Google Apps (for Education). I use each every day and believe they’ve helped me more than any other tools. An essential starting point for all educators.  To learn more try this excellent blog post from College@Home: ‘57Useful Google Tools You’ve Never Heard of’

· Edublogs: The blogging world is a vibrant place embedded with passion and enthusiasm that tends to be contagious. Starting a blog (or 5 in my case) is a great way to become immersed in the thinking and challenges of Web 2.0. Edublogs worked perfectly for me because it had simple, easy to follow, films I could watch and also The Edublogger, a fantastic resource for all bloggers.

· Microblogging Tools: At first it was Twitter and then Plurk. I love the sharing and camaraderie these tools allow. Plurk is ‘time-zone friendly’ because the timeline allows me to easily follow and contribute to discussions that happen while I’m asleep. Twitter is not quite as useful in this respect although it is still one of the best and I have made some of my best discoveries via tweets. Both are valuable tools for educators. I’m hoping Edmodo, microblogging for education, will work just as well with my students.

TOP 3 Blogs: The ones I read first are:

· Jane’s E-learning Pick of the Day

· Free Technology for Teachers

· Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day

All fantastic blogs to follow!  Great resources for educators.

TOP 3 Diigo Groups:

Educational discoveries abound:

· Web 2.0 tools for teachers

· Classroom 2.0

· OZ/NZ Educators

Top 5 Wow-factor tools: (Tools that impress with very little effort!)

· ClassTools: Impress students and teachers with your specially designed games

· Glogster: So many possibilities…higher-order thinking opportunities in abudnance.

· Pageflakes: a great tool for educators; the ‘anything flake’ opens up all sorts of possibilities. Great as the ‘front page’ for our Earth 2.0 webquest.

· Animoto: Very cool presentations. Impress the ‘too cool for school’ group with this nifty little tool

· Flickr: More than you think! Creative Commons makes this the best starting point for educators looking for great images.  Lots of tools worth exploring too!

However, it’s not really about the tools…

It’s about quality teaching and learning; it’s about being an agent of change and it’s about equipping students and teachers and being an agent of change so that, eventually, all teachers and students are equipped with the skills they need to function fully in the 21^st Century.

Inspired by the amazing ideas and thinking generated at the recent ELH conference I decided to ‘experiment’ with my PLN and begin a collaborative slideshow. (They’re a lively bunch ready for any challenge!)

I wanted to build something for my work colleagues to illustrate the power of the group and show the potential for us all to save time and energy when we work together. At the same time I wanted to encourage reflective thought and build something members of my PLN could also share with colleagues as appropriate.

PLN Power:

The ‘PLN Reflections’ slideshow below is the result of my experiment. It’s powerful stuff; creative and inspirational. Achieved in a matter of days, across several time zones and without any drama, it is a small taste of what can be done. However, the best part is not the slideshow itself but the interactions and enthusiasm that occurred behind the scenes, particular in plurk. I’m already hatching plans for a ‘We are the Children’ equivalent…watch this space!

Discovered Animoto yesterday…signed up, uploaded images of book covers and created a very cool video clip in less than 10 minutes. I can imagine it being used for all sorts of learning activities. Some that immediately spring to mind are:

• A visual reflection on a text’s themes (particularly useful for musical and visual learners)
• A pictorial essay
• Creative ‘writing’ (digital storytelling, poetry)
• Student Presentations (great for advertising projects etc)
• Adding ‘cred’ to teacher presentations.

I get very excited when I discover a ‘learning gem’ with so much classroom potential. Let’s face it, anything with the potential to engage and revive ’sluggish’ students is worth a look.

I am still exploring the web looking for ideas to help with my Book Week Literacy project, a story book using the prompt “Imagine if I discovered…” In my travels I found Big Universe Online Children’s Books and created a small story using the prompt myself. The book was easy to construct using illustrations provided on site although I did have to watch the demo first. It was approved for online publishing in a few hours. I decided that Big Universe has huge ‘learning gem’ potential. I can imagine teachers and parents using it as a literature and writing learning tool. Hopefully, it will also help me to create some excitement for my Book Week project!

The books are free to create and read online.

I used image chef to create the banner above. I can see lots of potential for teachers and students. It is great for others like me…I can’t draw but at least I can use technology to create visually appealing stuff.

I like the idea of using polls to encourage students and teachers to think about their attitudes and behaviours when using a particular resource, whether it be a blog, a library, textbook or other learning technology. This type of reflective thinking can be very powerful because it forces us to focus on learning behaviours and challenge our thinking. I discovered PollDaddy while visiting my local library’s web page and thought I’d try my hand at it!

My Poll question is: How do you use blogs for educational purposes?

surveys – Take Our Poll

Retraining as a teacher-librarian has reawakened my love of teaching, learning and technology. However, after 2 years in the role I am still surprised that T-Ls have such a tough time convincing others of their worth. Other teachers seem to ‘forget’ the vital role that a T-L may have played in developing a unit of work, offering up-to-date advice and ideas, or finding the right resource to spark students’ interest in learning. Unfortunately, inspiring students and teachers is a difficult thing to measure and I worry that T-Ls are marginalized because of this.

‘Invisible’ achievement is not good for the profession! T-Ls need to stop being the quiet achievers in school communities and set about actively reminding other teachers and administrators of their central and vital role in teaching and learning. This blog is my attempt to do just that…I will use it to share the ‘learning gems’ I have gathered, and continue to gather, as a lifelong learner and teacher.

What better place to begin than by sharing my favourite learning gem discovery for this week…ript. Access it via ript.com It is a great organizational tool that would probably suit both students and teachers alike.