The first wiki I discovered that really peeked my interest was Go West, a wiki about Westward Expansion. As a former social studies teacher I was really impressed at how well developed the wiki was and its level collaboration. The students were able to create and share pictures, artifacts and videos onto the wiki. The students were able to include their own artwork to project which helped to enhance the level of authenticity to the students. If I were to update this site, I would make the site more collaborative. The students would have the ability to make comments and offer suggestions to each other’s work.
The next educational wiki that I investigated was FHS Wolves from Fayetteville High School in Talladega County Alabama. This wiki was created to help support 11th grade English and U.S. History students. The site offers a staggering amount of resources and links to really help students. The information is well laid out and organized. The teacher utilizes other programs like Voki that allow for the students to create avatars for collaborative discussion that really help to propel the content forward. The wiki was missing a greater collaborative aspect, there was not a lot of examples of student work. The wiki was used more so for discussion and educational resources. If I were creating this site I would include a greater collaborative aspect and allow for students to post work and receive both teacher and peer feedback.
The developer of the wiki, Mrs. Jennifer Barrett stated that, “This wiki is not an active space since I am no longer in the classroom” (Barnett, J., n.d.). Even though the wiki is no longer active the information in it is extremely relevant and is a great example of what educational wikis are capable of becoming.
Two great examples of collaborative and productivity tools are Microsoft OneNote and Skype for Education. Both of these tools are awesome examples of the possibilities of collaborative and productivity tools.
OneNote by Microsoft is an online interactive notebook that allows students to work collaboratively on projects and notes. Students can share their notes with other students and their teacher. As a Technology Specialist I have created multiple notebooks and showed teachers how it can change their classroom. OneNote addresses Bloom's Taxonomy by allowing students to create, analyze, evaluate and remember understanding. OneNote is able to addresses many different level of Bloom's Taxonomy because of OneNote's flexibility as an educational tool.
This year I have worked closely with a 9th grade American Literature teacher to create a OneNote Notebook. We created a shared OneNote Class Notebook that all of the students can work collaboratively within. The students have ability to integrate their OneNote with Word to import essays and writing samples into a collaborative space within the notebook. Other students can then read, critique and offer constructive criticism on their writing. Each student can then post their final product into a shared notebook with their teacher, and receive immediate private feedback. OneNote also addresses the needs of students with disabilities through the use of assistive technology. OneNote offers two tools included within the Learning Tool expansion called, Immersive Reader and Dictate. Immersive Reader allows for the learner to have text read back to them. Dictate utilizes speech recognition software to convert speech directly to text from within OneNote.
Skype addresses students with disabilities by allowing them to interact with other students and work collaboratively without having to leave the classroom. Students that are physically unable to leave the classroom can take a trip anywhere with the power of Skype.
Along with utilizing Skype for the classroom, it is also a great tool for professional development. I have used Skype many times to participate in professional development webinars within my county, called Webinar Wednesday. This year I was able to host a webinar entitled, “5 Tech Tools for your Digital Age Classroom.” Skype allowed me to present and interact with teachers from all around the county.
Works Cited:
Barnett, J. (n.d.). Home. Retrieved September 25, 2016, from http://fhswolvesden.wikispaces.com/
Reich, J., Murnane, R., & Willett, J. (2012, January 01). The state of wiki usage in U.S. k-12 schools: leveraging web 2.0 data warehouses to assess quality and equity in online
learning environments. Educational Researcher, 41(1), 7-15.
doi:10.3102/0013189x11427083