We started the day by repeating the blogging assignment from Day 2… with some minor changes:
1. Find an interesting post on another blog.
2. Read the post (& think).
3. Write about the post on your blog (& think).
4. Include a link back to the original post. (Hint: Rt. Click on the post in bloglines to get the permalink.)
Meanwhile, I demonstrated moblogging. Both exercises of course led to a good deal of questions and conversation, during which I wound up sharing principal Tim Lauer’s blog and the school-wide blogs and podcasts of Dr. Tim Tyson’s Mabry Middle School. We also spent a little more time on the social aspects of FURL.
Then we got into wikis, using wikispaces, which was definitely a second wind for the participants. During the hands-on training, I shared a wide variety of example wikis and wiki resources:
http://ab430.wikispaces.org (A wiki used to organize a summer meeting)
http://supportblogging.wikispaces.com/NECC+EdBlogger+Meetup (The NECC EdBlogger Meetup Wiki)
SupportBlogging.com (A wiki to support blogs in education!)
http://www.ahistoryteacher.com/necc2006/ (Dan McDowell’s “Using Wikis with K12 Students” resource)
http://hmtech.wikispaces.com (Eva’s wiki for sharing technology resources related to Houghton-Mifflin Language Arts themes)
http://aristotle-experiment.wikispaces.org (Dave Conlay’s amazing wiki for his 9-12 English students)
After lunch we took a brief break from wikis and I introduced the group to Flickr. I’m not sure it will take – we didn’t get to play with it much.
Dave Conlay then joined us (after he was done teaching summer school) and shared in-depth about his experiences with the aristotle-experiemnt, focusing on the communal aspects of wikis in his classes and on how he allowed the students to generate many of the ideas… or at least to run with them. He also highlighted ways in which he offered more or less structure to his Comp. Lit. and AP students. The participants were full of questions, and Dave was full of inspiring real-world real-teacher answers. I often show off his stuff, but could never have done it as well. Dave’s discussion also covered the use of free multimedia editing applications to create the final projects his students posted on the wiki. (He mentioned Audacity and I said I’d share a link in this recap. He also mentioned YouTube, a source of inspiration for some of his introductory segments for the kids. )
We wrapped up soon after with plans for a follow up day in October and with the final survey. I enjoyed the week with the dedicated folks who took three days out of their summer to join me at the OCDE to learn about blogs and the read/write web. I look forward to seeing where they run with this.