In an assignment a few quarters back (about a year ago I'm realizing) I had to make an educational video podcast all by myself. In the class we focused on Constructivist Learning Theory, and we had to purchase the expensive and hefty Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. You may have noticed that I used it as a source in my previous post - Classroom wikis. I figured I paid enough darn $$$ for it that it might as well serve a purpose outside of that other class.
Anyway, making the podcast was really fun! It took a lot of time, but I know how to make one about five times faster, so that's always the bonus of learning how to use the technology... finding short-cuts and making things more efficient later.
My podcast is on authentic practice and using data sets to make conclusions. I used the wonderful CLEA software to get data on the rotational orbits of Jupiter's Moons. Good old Galileo. He first spotted the four largest moons - aptly called Galilean moons - and also noticed the "ears" (rings, actually) of Saturn.
Okay, enough intro, here's the link to the podcast. You can find it at Teachertube.com, like YouTube, for Teachers. "Ya know, for kids!" - Hudsucker Proxy
BEWARE! It is kinda lengthy, somewhere around 20 minutes.
Danelle's Video Podcast
I'm the user: mrsrowley
(heehee, that's me playing the piano.)
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Technology Review Paper
- What do you think of my technology review? Constructive criticism appreciated.
- Would you like your child's/children's teacher(s) to use this kind of technology in the classroom?
- Or are you a teacher and would like to use a wiki in your own classroom?
- Or are you just a friend of Danelle and would like to find out what she is learning at her Drexel educational program?
Then read on.
----------------------------------------
Danelle the Dragon
Educ 535
Short Review Paper
10/19/2008
Classroom Wikis: Online Learning, Writing, and Collaboration
An emerging technology that is making its way into the classroom is the classroom wiki. A wiki is a dynamic webpage that can be written and edited by any users. For a classroom, the wiki’s information can be edited by either the teacher or the students. Wikis can create a sense of community among its members and users, and can combine and synergize the collective knowledge to elevate the members and online community.
Many are familiar with an electronic, free-to-use, world-wide wiki called Wikipedia.org. In many senses, Wikipedia is replacing the traditional Encyclopedia as an educational reference. Wikipedia’s use can sometimes be controversial in the classroom, due to a problem with the information sharing; sometimes contributors can knowingly or unknowingly introduce incorrect information into a wiki page. Wikipedia’s monitors and referees try to catch these problems or flag controversial pages. However, wikis are similar to any forum or group that shares information and answers questions – everyone is at different learning levels and misunderstandings or fallacies may happen. Nearly all of the people in a community have a general sense of honesty, of contributing to and providing service for the other members by providing correct information so all may benefit.
In an Edutopia.org article, The Way of the Wiki, classroom wikis are described as “the ultimate enablers of collaboration.” Classroom wikis can become a place where students can upload and contribute classroom notes, texts, images, videos, and other class or group work, and each group member can continue to build upon what the previous person has contributed. Learning in a collaborative community like this, whether in real-time or virtually through the internet, can have great educational benefits. According to the Constructivist Learning Theory, communities of learners can advance the collective knowledge in a way that supports the growth of an individual’s knowledge. This can be different from traditional teaching methods, where the teacher gives knowledge to students and “learning is viewed as an individual pursuit” (Sawyer, 55). In Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community, the authors give examples of how online collaboration can deepen a student’s understanding and critical thinking, and projects can become more creative and meaningful.
While wiki pioneers had to deal with coding these dynamic websites a few years ago, sites are now available where teachers can register as users and start using wikis in their classrooms. One of these sites is Wikispaces. It launched during 2005 and now has nearly 400,000 K-12 registered teachers and students. Public wiki sites are free, but typically private memberships can cost between $5 - 50 a year. Wkispaces also gives away free wikis for K-12 education, great for any teacher that can’t quite afford it. Private wikispaces are secure and the teacher can set privacy settings to let only allowed users access the page, probably students and parents or legal guardians. This can quell any fears about students being observed or contacted by online predators.
Classroom wikis can tap into the dynamic of the popular community websites like Myspace.com and Facebook.com. Students enjoy being social, and learning in social contexts like a classroom wiki environment inside and outside of class can increase and deepen student learning and understanding. Students can also do a great deal of peer learning and review, essentially filling the teaching role in helping one another to understand a concept better.
Wiki pages can be used by many student age groups, and the example of the screenshot in Figure 1 is a secondary history course wiki classroom page. RSS feeds as well as a “Recent Changes” link can help teachers and students to find the recently modified information, as well as be notified of changes and updates. This can save classroom time instead of navigating around the wiki, attempting to find the updated information.
Figure 1 – Sample Wiki History Classroom Page
http://gcsehistory.wikispaces.com/
When students begin to edit and update a wiki page with notes from class and other information, a student begins to think metacognitively and critically about what he or she understands and how to explain it. During this process of thinking, reflecting, and writing, a student can organize knowledge, and also begin to realize where there may be gaps in knowledge. In the text Writing To Learn Mathematics, by Joan Countryman, she describes how the writing process can help students to form ideas and make connections. When students are contributing to or editing a page, critical thought begins to take place. Writing about mathematics can help a student to know more about mathematics, how they may respond to it emotionally, what they enjoy at math, what they need more practice doing, etc. Specifically where Physics is concerned, students are also presented with a lot of condensed information, some of it contained in equations, and writing about the concepts and equations can give students a better grasp on “what the math is saying.” Writing to understand will be an important part in my Physics classroom, not just, “did you get the right answer?”.
Students can also become introduced to the concept of online publication through a classroom wiki. In Forte and Bruckman’s article From Wikipedia to the Classroom: Exploring Online Publication and Learning, students can become engaged in authentic collaborative writing activities through a wiki. When writing, students can more readily construct knowledge. Students are more aware of their audience (in this case their peers and teacher) and gain expertise in writing to that audience. Wikis and collaborative publishing have four different dimensions that impact motivation and learning outcomes: students feel a personal connection and begin to care about the success of the site, it is still disciplinary and aligns with educational standards and practices, it also has a real-world aspect, and it can be used as informal, formative assessment to see how a student is performing in a course. Students can also use creativity in writing about an idea on the wiki that they feel is interesting.
I am training to be a secondary physics and science teacher, and I know that the material can be challenging, but rewarding. Student interest in online communities and social learning can be put to good use in the classroom through a wiki, and I hope to have a wiki, as well as an interactive page containing the wiki, announcements, handouts, WebQuests, Q&A forums, and video podcasts (with narration and subtitles) for my students to increase knowledge, make connections, and review information while away from the classroom. Students that miss class or have learning disabilities like ADD/ADHD or are hard of hearing, visually impaired, etc, will have a learning and review resource center that they can access out of class and around the clock. They will also gain more digital literacy and use more Web 2.0 skills.
References
Countryman, J. (1992). Writing To Learn Mathematics: Strategies That Work. Heinemann, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Forte, A. and A. Bruckman (2006). From Wikipedia to the Classroom: Exploring Online Publication and Learning. Georgia Institute of Technology. Retrieved October 18, 2008 from http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/papers/forte-bruckman-icls06.pdf
Palloff, R. M., and K. Pratt (2005). Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.
Rubenstein, G. (2008). The Way of the Wiki: Building Online Creativity and Cooperation. Edutopia. Retrieved October 18, 2008, from http://www.edutopia.org/whats-next-2008-wiki-technology
Sawyer, R. K. (2006). The Cambridge Handbook of The Learning Sciences. Cambridge University Press, NY.
- Would you like your child's/children's teacher(s) to use this kind of technology in the classroom?
- Or are you a teacher and would like to use a wiki in your own classroom?
- Or are you just a friend of Danelle and would like to find out what she is learning at her Drexel educational program?
Then read on.
----------------------------------------
Danelle the Dragon
Educ 535
Short Review Paper
10/19/2008
Classroom Wikis: Online Learning, Writing, and Collaboration
An emerging technology that is making its way into the classroom is the classroom wiki. A wiki is a dynamic webpage that can be written and edited by any users. For a classroom, the wiki’s information can be edited by either the teacher or the students. Wikis can create a sense of community among its members and users, and can combine and synergize the collective knowledge to elevate the members and online community.
Many are familiar with an electronic, free-to-use, world-wide wiki called Wikipedia.org. In many senses, Wikipedia is replacing the traditional Encyclopedia as an educational reference. Wikipedia’s use can sometimes be controversial in the classroom, due to a problem with the information sharing; sometimes contributors can knowingly or unknowingly introduce incorrect information into a wiki page. Wikipedia’s monitors and referees try to catch these problems or flag controversial pages. However, wikis are similar to any forum or group that shares information and answers questions – everyone is at different learning levels and misunderstandings or fallacies may happen. Nearly all of the people in a community have a general sense of honesty, of contributing to and providing service for the other members by providing correct information so all may benefit.
In an Edutopia.org article, The Way of the Wiki, classroom wikis are described as “the ultimate enablers of collaboration.” Classroom wikis can become a place where students can upload and contribute classroom notes, texts, images, videos, and other class or group work, and each group member can continue to build upon what the previous person has contributed. Learning in a collaborative community like this, whether in real-time or virtually through the internet, can have great educational benefits. According to the Constructivist Learning Theory, communities of learners can advance the collective knowledge in a way that supports the growth of an individual’s knowledge. This can be different from traditional teaching methods, where the teacher gives knowledge to students and “learning is viewed as an individual pursuit” (Sawyer, 55). In Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community, the authors give examples of how online collaboration can deepen a student’s understanding and critical thinking, and projects can become more creative and meaningful.
While wiki pioneers had to deal with coding these dynamic websites a few years ago, sites are now available where teachers can register as users and start using wikis in their classrooms. One of these sites is Wikispaces. It launched during 2005 and now has nearly 400,000 K-12 registered teachers and students. Public wiki sites are free, but typically private memberships can cost between $5 - 50 a year. Wkispaces also gives away free wikis for K-12 education, great for any teacher that can’t quite afford it. Private wikispaces are secure and the teacher can set privacy settings to let only allowed users access the page, probably students and parents or legal guardians. This can quell any fears about students being observed or contacted by online predators.
Classroom wikis can tap into the dynamic of the popular community websites like Myspace.com and Facebook.com. Students enjoy being social, and learning in social contexts like a classroom wiki environment inside and outside of class can increase and deepen student learning and understanding. Students can also do a great deal of peer learning and review, essentially filling the teaching role in helping one another to understand a concept better.
Wiki pages can be used by many student age groups, and the example of the screenshot in Figure 1 is a secondary history course wiki classroom page. RSS feeds as well as a “Recent Changes” link can help teachers and students to find the recently modified information, as well as be notified of changes and updates. This can save classroom time instead of navigating around the wiki, attempting to find the updated information.
Figure 1 – Sample Wiki History Classroom Page
http://gcsehistory.wikispaces.com/
When students begin to edit and update a wiki page with notes from class and other information, a student begins to think metacognitively and critically about what he or she understands and how to explain it. During this process of thinking, reflecting, and writing, a student can organize knowledge, and also begin to realize where there may be gaps in knowledge. In the text Writing To Learn Mathematics, by Joan Countryman, she describes how the writing process can help students to form ideas and make connections. When students are contributing to or editing a page, critical thought begins to take place. Writing about mathematics can help a student to know more about mathematics, how they may respond to it emotionally, what they enjoy at math, what they need more practice doing, etc. Specifically where Physics is concerned, students are also presented with a lot of condensed information, some of it contained in equations, and writing about the concepts and equations can give students a better grasp on “what the math is saying.” Writing to understand will be an important part in my Physics classroom, not just, “did you get the right answer?”.
Students can also become introduced to the concept of online publication through a classroom wiki. In Forte and Bruckman’s article From Wikipedia to the Classroom: Exploring Online Publication and Learning, students can become engaged in authentic collaborative writing activities through a wiki. When writing, students can more readily construct knowledge. Students are more aware of their audience (in this case their peers and teacher) and gain expertise in writing to that audience. Wikis and collaborative publishing have four different dimensions that impact motivation and learning outcomes: students feel a personal connection and begin to care about the success of the site, it is still disciplinary and aligns with educational standards and practices, it also has a real-world aspect, and it can be used as informal, formative assessment to see how a student is performing in a course. Students can also use creativity in writing about an idea on the wiki that they feel is interesting.
I am training to be a secondary physics and science teacher, and I know that the material can be challenging, but rewarding. Student interest in online communities and social learning can be put to good use in the classroom through a wiki, and I hope to have a wiki, as well as an interactive page containing the wiki, announcements, handouts, WebQuests, Q&A forums, and video podcasts (with narration and subtitles) for my students to increase knowledge, make connections, and review information while away from the classroom. Students that miss class or have learning disabilities like ADD/ADHD or are hard of hearing, visually impaired, etc, will have a learning and review resource center that they can access out of class and around the clock. They will also gain more digital literacy and use more Web 2.0 skills.
References
Countryman, J. (1992). Writing To Learn Mathematics: Strategies That Work. Heinemann, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Forte, A. and A. Bruckman (2006). From Wikipedia to the Classroom: Exploring Online Publication and Learning. Georgia Institute of Technology. Retrieved October 18, 2008 from http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/papers/forte-bruckman-icls06.pdf
Palloff, R. M., and K. Pratt (2005). Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.
Rubenstein, G. (2008). The Way of the Wiki: Building Online Creativity and Cooperation. Edutopia. Retrieved October 18, 2008, from http://www.edutopia.org/whats-next-2008-wiki-technology
Sawyer, R. K. (2006). The Cambridge Handbook of The Learning Sciences. Cambridge University Press, NY.
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