Wiki+Workshop+3

Wiki Workshop Session 3
Now that we have looked at the past and the present of educational technology, what about the future. Well Karl Fisch has a video called 2020, what the graduation class of 2020 has to look forward to.

media type="google" key="7281108124087435381&hl=en" width="380" height="306"

Building your wiki
Start simple, don't try to do too much with your first wiki. If this is a classroom wiki make sure you are comfortable navigating around the wiki before you introduce it to your students. Once you introduce your students to the wiki don't be surprised at how quickly the students learn how to navigate and add content, after all they are the Digital Natives.

Create New Page and Links
Open your wiki and create three new pages. Name them, New Page1, New Page2, New Page3 To make a link to New Page1 click on __edit navigation__ This will open the space.menu, type in New Page1, click on the link icon, this is an internal wiki link so link it to New Page1 You should see New Page1 in the navigation. You can make as many pages as you want, you may not want all of them in the navigation window. To make a link from one page to another. Open New Page1. Edit, Type in "This is a link to New Page2 from another page." Highlight New Page2 and click the link icon. Make the link to New Page2. So now you have a link from one page to another.

Create link to other wiki or web site
Link to an other wiki or web site. Open another browser window and go to http://educationalwikis.wikispaces.com, right click the URL and Copy. Go back to your wiki window. Type in " Educational wikis is a great place to find resources for developing a wiki in your classroom." Highlight the words Educational wiki. Click on the link icon, this time it is an External Link so click on the button. In the address bar next to http: put the curser and right click, past the URL. Make sure you don't have two http:// in the address. Click OK You now have a link to another wiki, you can make links to any other web resource.

Insert image
Most web ready images can be inserted in a wiki. Flickr is a free service from Yahoo that has thousands of images, many are free to use. Open another browser window if you need to. Go to flickr.com, in the search bar type in OLPC, this stand for One Laptop Per Child, Right click on the first image, Save Image As .., save it on the desk top as OLPC. Click on the Insert Image and Files icon. Upload New File, browse to the desktop and click on the OLPC image. Upload An image thumbnail should appear. Double click it and it will be inserted at the curser.

Adding student members
Make the school administration and parents aware of the wiki and how you are going to use it as part of the curriculum. Depending on the school guidlines you may need to get parent permission for the students to use the wiki. There are two ways to add students to the wiki. One easy way to start using the wiki is to post your schedule, class assignments and notices. This will get students and parents to begin using the wiki as a resource. Invite parents to post in the discussion if they have any questions. Start a FAQ page for parents and students. Invite students to add to a list of resources about math, science, history, etc. Once you and your students become more comfortable with the wiki begin to use it as the collaboration tool it was designed for. As you begin to use the wiki more ideas will come. Continue to look at other wikis and post in their discussion or join and add to the knowledge base. Communicate with other teachers about your wiki and theirs.
 * 1) Invite the student through email. Many students have email accounts through the school or their own personal email. I use gaggle.net to set up student email accounts. Gaggle.net offers free (ad supported) emails for schools. They have a very good monitoring system that blocks key words and then alerts teachers and administrators of any misuse of the email. Middle and high school students should be learning how to use email anyway.
 * 2) Wikispaces will set up student accounts for free. All you need to do is send them a list of the student names and your wiki space name. For elementary students this is the best option.
 * Teams of students working on a research project.
 * Building your own classroom wikipedia about: famous authors, biology, grammar, geometry, etc.
 * Teams in another classroom in the same building or another school working on a research project.
 * Writing projects, each student adds a paragraph to a story, students edit each others essay, collect data for a research paper.