Sunday 26 July 2009

So you have a blog, a wiki or both... What now?

Deciding how you want to use your blog and wiki sites in your teaching and professional learning is a key question. Nothing needs to be set in stone, the purpose and content can be evolving. One thing to remember is that ideally the personal and professional should not overlap on blog and wiki sites being used in teaching.

It is always useful to keep up with how other teachers use their sites. Some of my previous posts have links to top blogs and wikis for teachers. At this exciting time, with the rollout of DERNSW laptops for teachers and Year 9, it is vital to keep up with what the Department is putting online to assist teachers with resources for lessons.

On her Edublogger blog, Sue Waters, from Western Australia talks about emerging technologies and provides assistance to those wanting to use edublogs.

Andrew Churches, educational origami wiki is fabulous. The Starter Sheets for various tools are extremely useful as is his work on Blooms Taxonomy.

This website, Ideas to Inspire, compiled with the assistance of bloggers and twitterati has an amazing range of useful ideas and tools. Each section is a google docs presentation.

Angela Maiers writes a number of blogs including Chalk Talk Friday where she records posts and links that have caught her attention on the networks.

A wiki by Wes Fryer, entitled Teach Digital has a section: Safe Classroom Blogging to Improve Student Writing that is also very useful.

This site offers numerous resources and quality teaching ideas including useful materials on Bloom's Taxonomy.

Miguel Guhlin has collated many useful resources on various blog/wiki sites. This one, Creating the Walled Garden: Setting Up Web 2.0 Apps on School District Servers is particularly valuable.

Ricahrd Byrne has insprired with a slideshow: Blogs, Wikis and File Sharing. Oh My! and his Free Technology for Teachers blog is a must-follow.

Ning groups are worth considering for professional learning. Classroom 2.0 is a free, community-supported network and states: "We especially hope that those who are "beginners" will find this a supportive community and a comfortable place to start being part of the digital dialog. If you feel that you are a beginner and want some extra help, please click here to join the Beginner Group as soon as you've registered."

This site offers many interesting lists of sites to explore, this one deals with web applications that may entice.


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