I last wrote that we were trying to use the assignment module as a tool for the ongoing journaling between each student and myself. I liked the privacy and that the text fields didn't become increasing narrow as the replies nested. Unfortunately, even when I selected the options for my comments to be in-line, it didn't work. My comments would not intersperse between their comments and the children found the whole venture very confusing.
Thankfully, pdzone left me a comment to my earlier post, suggesting I try the wiki module for my journals. I set it up with each student having their own wiki. The wikis are private; only the student and I can see or edit the wiki.
The students were glad we were abandoning the assignment-style journals and they loved the term wiki-wiki, so they were game to give it a try. Thus far, the wiki seem to be working. Students were a bit confused at first about how to add to the journal- the edit button wasn't an obvious choice, since in their minds, they weren't editing.
Students were also confused by what they saw after hitting the edit button. The cause of the problem is that to make the journals easier to read, I make my replies italic and blue-- the students are using an older web browser that doesn't give them formatting options. Since my text is formatted, when students click the edit button, my posts are encased in html coding. However, I showed them how to just click at the top of the edit box, add a few blank rows, and type their response, and they quickly adapted.
Our only real difficulty came last weekend when I went to make my first replies. I was using Firefox version 1.5.0.3. It appears that this new version doesn't play well with the Moodle wiki. I could start new wikis using it, but if I tried to edit an existing wiki, my additions disappeared when I hit the save button. After a frustrating ten minutes, I thought to switch to Netscape. This solved the problem.
I am excited that the wiki option is working because it is quicker; I spend less time waiting for Moodle pages to load. It seems to meet all our needs and since the pages don't fill as quickly, I won't need to keep switching us to a fresh set up. This is important since my students want to continue journaling after the school year is over. I love the idea, but don't want to spend a lot of time on upkeep. Now the challenge is to see if edit notification is available via email or RSS.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Sunday, April 30, 2006
A Surprising Lack of Sophistication
Friday found my science classes in the good computer lab to take the pretest for our nutrition unit. With the remaining time, I had them play the My Pyramid BlastOff! game as a lead in to learning about the new food pyramid. It is one of the many resources available at the Mypyramid.gov website.
The game challenges students to fuel a rocket ship by planning a day's worth of balanced nutrition and physical activity. I expected that my video game savvy fifth graders would see right through it and easily blast off to the planet. I was wrong! They were fueling the rocket with the cookies, sugary cereals and soda that they normally drink, and they were all losing the game. That made me like the game all the more.
One strength is that the initial screen gives them a few quick guidelines. It wasn't much reading, but a number of students blew right past it anyway. Next, like any good video game, it doesn't tell you everything. For example, the food pyramid that dominates the screen has a fuel gauge on each of the food groups. The directions don't mention that you have a balanced diet when all the fuel gauges are at full. After a few losses, my students started figuring that out.
When your rocket ship goes up in a cloud of smoke, you get a screen that shows which parts of your diet were balanced and which weren't. After losing the game, I noticed students actually stopping to pour over that page.
What I liked the most was that I couldn't get students to quit playing to go to lunch, and a number of them asked if I would give them credit for beating the game if they finished it at home and printed out the certificate. The one student who did successfully complete the game admitted that she had been on my SchoolNotes page earlier in the week. She'd seen the link and had played the game at home a few times. Gotta love that!
In any case, I think it was a good anticipatory set and with the carrot of getting to play the game at the end of the unit, I think their studies will seem more purposeful and be more focused. Not a bad payoff for 20 minutes at a website.
The game challenges students to fuel a rocket ship by planning a day's worth of balanced nutrition and physical activity. I expected that my video game savvy fifth graders would see right through it and easily blast off to the planet. I was wrong! They were fueling the rocket with the cookies, sugary cereals and soda that they normally drink, and they were all losing the game. That made me like the game all the more.
One strength is that the initial screen gives them a few quick guidelines. It wasn't much reading, but a number of students blew right past it anyway. Next, like any good video game, it doesn't tell you everything. For example, the food pyramid that dominates the screen has a fuel gauge on each of the food groups. The directions don't mention that you have a balanced diet when all the fuel gauges are at full. After a few losses, my students started figuring that out.
When your rocket ship goes up in a cloud of smoke, you get a screen that shows which parts of your diet were balanced and which weren't. After losing the game, I noticed students actually stopping to pour over that page.
What I liked the most was that I couldn't get students to quit playing to go to lunch, and a number of them asked if I would give them credit for beating the game if they finished it at home and printed out the certificate. The one student who did successfully complete the game admitted that she had been on my SchoolNotes page earlier in the week. She'd seen the link and had played the game at home a few times. Gotta love that!
In any case, I think it was a good anticipatory set and with the carrot of getting to play the game at the end of the unit, I think their studies will seem more purposeful and be more focused. Not a bad payoff for 20 minutes at a website.
How Do They Do That?
Okay, maybe someone out there can explain this to me. It seems that almost any time I mention an online app or service in this blog, I receive a helpful comment from someone associated with the company. I love their responsiveness. I've often learned timely, helpful information from these commenters. My only question is, how do they know I wrote about them?
I know there are things like Trackback, but I thought the poster had to do something to invoke it. Are they Googling their name? Is Technorati that quick to pick up hits? To test that, I went to Technorati and typed in eMates, since that was something I posted on recently. However, it didn't pull up my post. I tried it with a few other terms and still no luck, so that isn't how it works.
If anyone does know how this works, let me know. I'm intrigued.
[Upate: I think I figured it out. I went to Google's blog search and entered the same terms and they pulled my blog up in the first few hits. Not surprising since my blog is at Blogger which is owned by Google. Smart strategy on the part of start-ups!]
I know there are things like Trackback, but I thought the poster had to do something to invoke it. Are they Googling their name? Is Technorati that quick to pick up hits? To test that, I went to Technorati and typed in eMates, since that was something I posted on recently. However, it didn't pull up my post. I tried it with a few other terms and still no luck, so that isn't how it works.
If anyone does know how this works, let me know. I'm intrigued.
[Upate: I think I figured it out. I went to Google's blog search and entered the same terms and they pulled my blog up in the first few hits. Not surprising since my blog is at Blogger which is owned by Google. Smart strategy on the part of start-ups!]
Thursday, April 27, 2006
An Update
Arranging for my move to Singapore and keeping afloat at work are consuming every waking moment, which is why I've been posting so rarely. Here's an update.
For the past two weeks, when we weren't taking state tests, our time in the computer lab was spent writing DARE essays. For my communications class, I once again used Moodle to give students feedback. As before, it seemed to be an effective conferencing tool for my students and keep my from lugging piles of essays back and forth each night.
Starting next week, the NCLB testing will monopolize our computer lab completely, so this week we put a burst of energy into our blogs. On Monday I was out sick. I lifted my blogging lesson for the reserve teacher directly from Clarence Fisher's blog post on Supporting Discourse. As usual, a few kids were completely untouched and are showing no change in their commenting. However, a number of them are trying out the comment starters that Clarence found on Anne Davis' blog. For most of them, it still sounds a bit awkward. However, I am a firm believer in honoring approximations as students develop new skills. Hopefully they will soon own these new tools.
I've been streaking with the software side of things. The Superglu page I set up to make a one-stop link to our blogs is finally behaving. I quit making changes, so I assume it was technical difficulties with their servers. Now I'm struggling with Blogmeister. Some of the time, I receive email letters with comments to approve. When I click on the link to approve them, instead of a window popping open in my web browser that announces, "Comment Approved!", I get the message that no record exists. I'm getting a fairly high number of these. They never have a name with them, so I can't tell if it is one of our own students or one of our visitors. Luckily, the comment is visible in the email, so I show that to my students.
Final challenge at the moment is to find a painless way to track student blog posts through the writing process. In the past, I taught a number of courses at Hamline University. Participation in online forums via Blackboard was a mandatory part of the course. Since I found myself tracking those from home, school, and on campus, I set up a database in my PDA. Each student was a record. Each assignment was a field. The system worked well.
Since then, the software I used has gone out of business. I thought of using an Excel spreadsheet so I could mail merge it with a report card, but my Quickoffice never installed correctly and the company refused to help. I thought of using one of the nifty, free online web app creation tools, such as ZohoCreator. I still might go that route, especially if I can download the data in some friendly format. Or, I might use the free Mobile DB program on my PDA, even though it won't play nicely with anything on my desktop. One thing is for sure. I won't be toting a piece of paper as a checklist. With my impending move, there are already far too many of those little papers in my life.
For the past two weeks, when we weren't taking state tests, our time in the computer lab was spent writing DARE essays. For my communications class, I once again used Moodle to give students feedback. As before, it seemed to be an effective conferencing tool for my students and keep my from lugging piles of essays back and forth each night.
Starting next week, the NCLB testing will monopolize our computer lab completely, so this week we put a burst of energy into our blogs. On Monday I was out sick. I lifted my blogging lesson for the reserve teacher directly from Clarence Fisher's blog post on Supporting Discourse. As usual, a few kids were completely untouched and are showing no change in their commenting. However, a number of them are trying out the comment starters that Clarence found on Anne Davis' blog. For most of them, it still sounds a bit awkward. However, I am a firm believer in honoring approximations as students develop new skills. Hopefully they will soon own these new tools.
I've been streaking with the software side of things. The Superglu page I set up to make a one-stop link to our blogs is finally behaving. I quit making changes, so I assume it was technical difficulties with their servers. Now I'm struggling with Blogmeister. Some of the time, I receive email letters with comments to approve. When I click on the link to approve them, instead of a window popping open in my web browser that announces, "Comment Approved!", I get the message that no record exists. I'm getting a fairly high number of these. They never have a name with them, so I can't tell if it is one of our own students or one of our visitors. Luckily, the comment is visible in the email, so I show that to my students.
Final challenge at the moment is to find a painless way to track student blog posts through the writing process. In the past, I taught a number of courses at Hamline University. Participation in online forums via Blackboard was a mandatory part of the course. Since I found myself tracking those from home, school, and on campus, I set up a database in my PDA. Each student was a record. Each assignment was a field. The system worked well.
Since then, the software I used has gone out of business. I thought of using an Excel spreadsheet so I could mail merge it with a report card, but my Quickoffice never installed correctly and the company refused to help. I thought of using one of the nifty, free online web app creation tools, such as ZohoCreator. I still might go that route, especially if I can download the data in some friendly format. Or, I might use the free Mobile DB program on my PDA, even though it won't play nicely with anything on my desktop. One thing is for sure. I won't be toting a piece of paper as a checklist. With my impending move, there are already far too many of those little papers in my life.
Friday, April 07, 2006
The Kindness of Strangers
One of the things I most appreciate about edubloggers as a whole is their kindness. This kindness translates into a willingness to share of their knowledge and time.
This was demonstrated to me again this week as our student blogs took off. I posted a short notice in the ClassBlogmeister discussion group announcing our blogs and asking for teachers and classes to stop by -- especially those who could model good commenting, since some of my students are STILL stuck in the chat room genre of commenting.
Within minutes of my post, two teachers had already gone in and left a few comments. Soon other teachers contacted me. One is going to have her middle school students visit. A fourth grade teacher added our blogs to their list of blogs to visit.
As always, these first comments had an electrical effect on my bloggers. They knew all along that their work would be on the Internet. As a result, many of them have spent more time than usual on revising and editing. However, it wasn't until they were reading comments from people in California and Italy that it really clicked for them. This is not just some assignment. This is real. Real people are reading and responding to what they have written.
Here's where I could get all sappy about the power of the pen, the importance of real world applications, the empowering effect of the red/write web. I'll spare you that, even though it all has me beaming. I'll just say that you for the kindness of edubloggers.
This was demonstrated to me again this week as our student blogs took off. I posted a short notice in the ClassBlogmeister discussion group announcing our blogs and asking for teachers and classes to stop by -- especially those who could model good commenting, since some of my students are STILL stuck in the chat room genre of commenting.
Within minutes of my post, two teachers had already gone in and left a few comments. Soon other teachers contacted me. One is going to have her middle school students visit. A fourth grade teacher added our blogs to their list of blogs to visit.
As always, these first comments had an electrical effect on my bloggers. They knew all along that their work would be on the Internet. As a result, many of them have spent more time than usual on revising and editing. However, it wasn't until they were reading comments from people in California and Italy that it really clicked for them. This is not just some assignment. This is real. Real people are reading and responding to what they have written.
Here's where I could get all sappy about the power of the pen, the importance of real world applications, the empowering effect of the red/write web. I'll spare you that, even though it all has me beaming. I'll just say that you for the kindness of edubloggers.
KWL via Moodle
I often use KWL charts at the start of a new unit to assess both what the students already know and what they want to learn. As I prepare our next health unit, I decided to use the journal module in Moodle rather than have them write their KWL on paper.
To my surprise, I seemed to get longer responses from them than I usually get on paper. This is especially surprising because the students who are not in my communications class have not spent much time keyboarding this year so their typing is a bit laborious. For most students, the spelling was highly inaccurate and a number of words were left out completely-- a sure sign that they aren't rereading what they write. I know that is typical of children, but I wish I had ideas on how to get them to reread-- ideas that do not involve lower grades or some other punishment. Ultimately, I don't want them to edit their work to get a good grade; I want them to edit their work because poor mechanics make it more difficult for their readers to understand the writer's message.
Using the journal module worked well because it is private- students can only see their own entry, no one else's, and because I can read all of the responses from one page rather than needing to click on each message as I must do in a forum or assignment module. I wonder what module I should have used so that they could add their "What I learned" section after the unit; journals only allow one entry from the student.
To my surprise, I seemed to get longer responses from them than I usually get on paper. This is especially surprising because the students who are not in my communications class have not spent much time keyboarding this year so their typing is a bit laborious. For most students, the spelling was highly inaccurate and a number of words were left out completely-- a sure sign that they aren't rereading what they write. I know that is typical of children, but I wish I had ideas on how to get them to reread-- ideas that do not involve lower grades or some other punishment. Ultimately, I don't want them to edit their work to get a good grade; I want them to edit their work because poor mechanics make it more difficult for their readers to understand the writer's message.
Using the journal module worked well because it is private- students can only see their own entry, no one else's, and because I can read all of the responses from one page rather than needing to click on each message as I must do in a forum or assignment module. I wonder what module I should have used so that they could add their "What I learned" section after the unit; journals only allow one entry from the student.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Big Changes-- Singapore Ahead!
I'll keep this brief, but I am excited to announce that next year I will again be in S.E. Asia. Kent and I have accepted jobs at Singapore American School. He will teach grade 4 and I will be the IT Coordinator for the intermediate school.
This is a bittersweet announcement. I have finally figured out how to do my job here in Minnesota. I work for a gifted administrator. I work with a talented and dedicated staff. I have greatly enjoyed teaching this bunch of students who have been so willing to try whatever new bit of technology I placed before them. My school district welcomed me back after my previous leave, and now I am looking to leave again. Most difficult of all is the thought of once again leaving behind family and friends.
On the flip side is this opportunity to work at such a well-regarded school in a part of the world we enjoy. I'll once again be able to focus on technology integration, working with both students and staff. (Sometimes I need to pinch myself to believe that someone is willing to pay me to do work I enjoy so much.) I'll be teaching in a place with a strong, well-supported IT infrastructure.
We'll be living in a country that the UN human development index lists as one of the top ten countries in the world based on income, life expectancy and education. It is a tiny country located on an island that is approximately 26 x 14 miles in size. It has high population density, but then half of the land is set aside for parks, so maybe that balances out the crowding. It has excellent mass transit. I could go on and on, but I won't.
I wonder how this new job will change this blog? On one hand, technology integration will be much easier to implement there, but with strong programs already in place, there may be less room for exploring such as I've done with the eMates and Blogmeister and Moodle this year. However, I'm not worried; this is a fabulous opportunity for us.
In the mean time, we need to finish up this school year, rent the house and pack out. Anyone out there have any words of advice for two Minnesotans moving to Singapore?
This is a bittersweet announcement. I have finally figured out how to do my job here in Minnesota. I work for a gifted administrator. I work with a talented and dedicated staff. I have greatly enjoyed teaching this bunch of students who have been so willing to try whatever new bit of technology I placed before them. My school district welcomed me back after my previous leave, and now I am looking to leave again. Most difficult of all is the thought of once again leaving behind family and friends.
On the flip side is this opportunity to work at such a well-regarded school in a part of the world we enjoy. I'll once again be able to focus on technology integration, working with both students and staff. (Sometimes I need to pinch myself to believe that someone is willing to pay me to do work I enjoy so much.) I'll be teaching in a place with a strong, well-supported IT infrastructure.
We'll be living in a country that the UN human development index lists as one of the top ten countries in the world based on income, life expectancy and education. It is a tiny country located on an island that is approximately 26 x 14 miles in size. It has high population density, but then half of the land is set aside for parks, so maybe that balances out the crowding. It has excellent mass transit. I could go on and on, but I won't.
I wonder how this new job will change this blog? On one hand, technology integration will be much easier to implement there, but with strong programs already in place, there may be less room for exploring such as I've done with the eMates and Blogmeister and Moodle this year. However, I'm not worried; this is a fabulous opportunity for us.
In the mean time, we need to finish up this school year, rent the house and pack out. Anyone out there have any words of advice for two Minnesotans moving to Singapore?
Monday, March 27, 2006
The Moodle/Blogging Connection
Our student blogging project has taken a serendipitous turn. Students were writing their first blog entries in Blogmeister and submitting them for my approval. I was writing them carefully thought out responses, and then the responses were disappearing. Not all of them, but most of them. Not just once, but twice. Each time it took me well over an hour to comment, and now those comments are gone. Not Good.
I contacted the ClassBlogmeister discussion group but no one was able to offer any suggestions. What to do? These were the first student blogs in the school, maybe in the district. Oversight was definitely called for, but how to proceed?
I figured our most likely solution would involve our Moodle. I decided to create a blog post forum. Students could post their draft to the forum and then not only I but the rest of the class could conference with them on the piece by leaving replies. In addition to helping the children learn to conference on their writing, this could be the tool I was searching for to move them away from the inane, "Look at me!" type of responses they were currently leaving, to more thoughtful, helpful responses.
When I introduced it to the class, I tried to help them see that this was not the place to actually respond to the writing-- we'd do that in the comments section of the blog when the piece was published. Here in the forum, we are to respond to the following questions.
A new challenge with this solution is that the children are not able to revise their post in the forum. They could make the revisions in Appleworks and then add the revised piece to the forum as a new discussion item, but that separates the piece from the earlier comments. Another challenge is that it became difficult for me to track what I had read and what changes had been made by the writers. We needed to tweak this solution to solve these problems.
I have been playing around with wikis in another context so I decided to use the wiki module in Moodle. If the children created a new wiki page for each of their articles, the rest of the class could comment at the bottom of the page. The writer could continue to revise the article and the class could continue to comment until the piece was ready for publication. I thought tracking what needed to be read could be tricky, but this process would expose my students to a wiki, which is a goal I've had for a while.
Unfortunately, after I set up the wiki I realized that the Moodle wiki doesn't allow comments. I know that the Moodle folks are preparing to roll out a different wiki module. It was in beta testing the last time I checked.
Since the wiki wasn't solving our problem, I set up an assignment module. Now, students draft their blogs in Appleworks so that they can make use of the spell check. They post the drafts in the blog forum. They revise their drafts based on the feedback from peers and the submit the blog article in an assignment module.
Only the teacher and the writer can view the post in the assignment module, but the teacher can leave comments and the writer can make revisions right in the module. When the piece is ready for publication, they post it in Blogmeister and I publish it. It sounds ridiculously complex, but it has grown organically, so the children have been there each step of the way.
Most importantly, the children are writing and writing and writing. When they can't be in the computer lab, they are voluntarily using the eMates to draft their blogs. [They love to use the eMates.] Some children have written more in the past three weeks than they wrote for me all last term! And this doesn't take into account all the writing they are doing when they leave replies for other students. Along with this, our Moodle forum and assignment modules are allowing me to conference with each child, and for other voices to join in. It is creating a rich conversation. I'm eager to see where it goes.
I contacted the ClassBlogmeister discussion group but no one was able to offer any suggestions. What to do? These were the first student blogs in the school, maybe in the district. Oversight was definitely called for, but how to proceed?
I figured our most likely solution would involve our Moodle. I decided to create a blog post forum. Students could post their draft to the forum and then not only I but the rest of the class could conference with them on the piece by leaving replies. In addition to helping the children learn to conference on their writing, this could be the tool I was searching for to move them away from the inane, "Look at me!" type of responses they were currently leaving, to more thoughtful, helpful responses.
When I introduced it to the class, I tried to help them see that this was not the place to actually respond to the writing-- we'd do that in the comments section of the blog when the piece was published. Here in the forum, we are to respond to the following questions.
- Does the lead grab your attention and make you want to read more?
- What other parts of the blog post really held your attention? Why?
- What questions do you have after reading their post? Ask questions that will help them improve the article.
- Help them edit the mechanics if you notice mistakes.
A new challenge with this solution is that the children are not able to revise their post in the forum. They could make the revisions in Appleworks and then add the revised piece to the forum as a new discussion item, but that separates the piece from the earlier comments. Another challenge is that it became difficult for me to track what I had read and what changes had been made by the writers. We needed to tweak this solution to solve these problems.
I have been playing around with wikis in another context so I decided to use the wiki module in Moodle. If the children created a new wiki page for each of their articles, the rest of the class could comment at the bottom of the page. The writer could continue to revise the article and the class could continue to comment until the piece was ready for publication. I thought tracking what needed to be read could be tricky, but this process would expose my students to a wiki, which is a goal I've had for a while.
Unfortunately, after I set up the wiki I realized that the Moodle wiki doesn't allow comments. I know that the Moodle folks are preparing to roll out a different wiki module. It was in beta testing the last time I checked.
Since the wiki wasn't solving our problem, I set up an assignment module. Now, students draft their blogs in Appleworks so that they can make use of the spell check. They post the drafts in the blog forum. They revise their drafts based on the feedback from peers and the submit the blog article in an assignment module.
Only the teacher and the writer can view the post in the assignment module, but the teacher can leave comments and the writer can make revisions right in the module. When the piece is ready for publication, they post it in Blogmeister and I publish it. It sounds ridiculously complex, but it has grown organically, so the children have been there each step of the way.
Most importantly, the children are writing and writing and writing. When they can't be in the computer lab, they are voluntarily using the eMates to draft their blogs. [They love to use the eMates.] Some children have written more in the past three weeks than they wrote for me all last term! And this doesn't take into account all the writing they are doing when they leave replies for other students. Along with this, our Moodle forum and assignment modules are allowing me to conference with each child, and for other voices to join in. It is creating a rich conversation. I'm eager to see where it goes.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Slacker's Reward
I've had a wonderfully productive weekend.
First off, I explored a visually appealing beta wiki platform called Wet Paint. Not realizing they were still in beta, I created my first real wiki right in the middle of their feedback site (oops.) Realizing my error, I cut and paste each page from Wet Paint into Wikispaces. I had poked around at Wikispaces, but not really dug in to create something. I am starting to find my way. Today I discovered that I need to use double brackets to insert html code into the wiki. That should make it easier for me to get the pictures where I want them and make other adjustments.
The wiki I created at Wikispaces, is designed to assist teachers who decide to teach overseas. From what I see, there are many resources to help teachers secure an overseas job. However, once you land the job and need to back up your old live and get settled in a new country, there are fewer resources online. My wiki is an attempt to document what needs to be done to make that move a successful one. If you have something to contribute on that topic, please help edit the wiki. In an attempt to thwart at least a few of the spambots, I've set it up so that you must be a member of Wikispaces to edit the wiki. However, membership is free, so I hope that won't deter you from taking part.
In the course of creating the wiki, I finally downloaded my first picture from the Creative Commons section of Flickr. Flickr is set up to upload photos into your blog, complete with correct attribution to the photographer. I first attempted to move it from the blog to the wiki, but that was a failure, so I downloaded the photo and uploaded it to the wiki. I didn't know how to tweak the html of a wiki page, so my first attempt is inelegant, but better than the page was without the photo.
This weekend I researched what I'd need to do to replace the fading batteries in the eMates. I was able to take part in a small way in the barn raising at the EdTechTalk Wiki. I finally caught up on the feeds in my NetNewsWire Lite. Sent overdue emails. Talked with friends overseas. Ran a bunch of errands and so on.
Unfortunately, little of what I did was what needed to be done for a successful school week. This morning I should have been facing the grim prospect of not being fully planned for the week. Instead, I awoke to the sound of ice hitting the windows and the telephone ringing to tell us it was a snow day!! Now the trees branches are outlined with seven inches of snow and I'm in my easy chair. Life is Good.
First off, I explored a visually appealing beta wiki platform called Wet Paint. Not realizing they were still in beta, I created my first real wiki right in the middle of their feedback site (oops.) Realizing my error, I cut and paste each page from Wet Paint into Wikispaces. I had poked around at Wikispaces, but not really dug in to create something. I am starting to find my way. Today I discovered that I need to use double brackets to insert html code into the wiki. That should make it easier for me to get the pictures where I want them and make other adjustments.
The wiki I created at Wikispaces, is designed to assist teachers who decide to teach overseas. From what I see, there are many resources to help teachers secure an overseas job. However, once you land the job and need to back up your old live and get settled in a new country, there are fewer resources online. My wiki is an attempt to document what needs to be done to make that move a successful one. If you have something to contribute on that topic, please help edit the wiki. In an attempt to thwart at least a few of the spambots, I've set it up so that you must be a member of Wikispaces to edit the wiki. However, membership is free, so I hope that won't deter you from taking part.
In the course of creating the wiki, I finally downloaded my first picture from the Creative Commons section of Flickr. Flickr is set up to upload photos into your blog, complete with correct attribution to the photographer. I first attempted to move it from the blog to the wiki, but that was a failure, so I downloaded the photo and uploaded it to the wiki. I didn't know how to tweak the html of a wiki page, so my first attempt is inelegant, but better than the page was without the photo.
This weekend I researched what I'd need to do to replace the fading batteries in the eMates. I was able to take part in a small way in the barn raising at the EdTechTalk Wiki. I finally caught up on the feeds in my NetNewsWire Lite. Sent overdue emails. Talked with friends overseas. Ran a bunch of errands and so on.
Unfortunately, little of what I did was what needed to be done for a successful school week. This morning I should have been facing the grim prospect of not being fully planned for the week. Instead, I awoke to the sound of ice hitting the windows and the telephone ringing to tell us it was a snow day!! Now the trees branches are outlined with seven inches of snow and I'm in my easy chair. Life is Good.
A Few Tools to Help You See Your Audience
I mentioned coComment! a few days ago. I've been playing with two other free blogging tools worth mentioning.
The first is Amazing Counters. The service has a wide variety of counters to choose from. Once you've installed the counter, the site gives you a variety site statistics, and allows you to monitor all hits or just unique hits. Another useful feature is being able to teach the counter to not count your own visits. On the down side, the counter comes with an advertisement link. Fortunately, you are able to make it very small (see the link at the very bottom of this blog).
The other tool is great fun. gVisit.com allows you to track visitors to your blog using a Google Map. To use it, register at the site and tell it your blog's URL. They give you a piece of javascript code to insert into the html code of your blog. For those of you using Blogger, this is easily accomplished even if you don't know anything about html. From your settings controls, click on the Template tab and paste the code into the page. It doesn't seem to matter where on the page it is, and it doesn't show on the blog.
After that, visit the link they gave you to view a world map showing the location of your visitors. You can also display the data on your blog. The free service allows you to track your 20 most recent visitors. If you donate any amount of money to them, they will expand your features, including allowing you to track the 100 most recent visitors.
After I set up a SuprGlu page to aggregate our student blogs, I'll add both a counter and a Google Map. As Mr. Kuropatwa says,
The first is Amazing Counters. The service has a wide variety of counters to choose from. Once you've installed the counter, the site gives you a variety site statistics, and allows you to monitor all hits or just unique hits. Another useful feature is being able to teach the counter to not count your own visits. On the down side, the counter comes with an advertisement link. Fortunately, you are able to make it very small (see the link at the very bottom of this blog).
The other tool is great fun. gVisit.com allows you to track visitors to your blog using a Google Map. To use it, register at the site and tell it your blog's URL. They give you a piece of javascript code to insert into the html code of your blog. For those of you using Blogger, this is easily accomplished even if you don't know anything about html. From your settings controls, click on the Template tab and paste the code into the page. It doesn't seem to matter where on the page it is, and it doesn't show on the blog.
After that, visit the link they gave you to view a world map showing the location of your visitors. You can also display the data on your blog. The free service allows you to track your 20 most recent visitors. If you donate any amount of money to them, they will expand your features, including allowing you to track the 100 most recent visitors.
After I set up a SuprGlu page to aggregate our student blogs, I'll add both a counter and a Google Map. As Mr. Kuropatwa says,
The real "blog juice" is the global audience. When kids finally realize that what they write is being read and talked about by people across the globe they are inspired to do better work; they want to make a good impression. ... This is the main reason all my class blogs have Visitor Maps. They were installed, but invisible, for the first two weeks of the semester. When the map links went live the students were able to "see" their audience immediately.What an exciting time we are living in, when these powerful tools are free and easy to use.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Creating GIFT quizzes for Moodle
Moodle continues to be part of our classroom life.
One of the many ways we use it is for quizzes. The students tell me they prefer to take their quizzes and tests in Moodle because they get instant feedback. I prefer it because for low-level things like spelling tests, they take half the time and are scored correctly by someone besides me.
Actually, they have taken much longer, but the time has been coming out of my prep time instead of my class time. Creating the quizzes in Moodle is a fairly tedious process. It is easy and works well, but it is putzy.
I knew that the Moodle quiz module would import GIFT files, but I wasn't having much luck getting that to work. I incorrectly assumed that if I exported the files in GIFT format and opened them with TextEdit, then I could do a quick "Save As" command and voila! I'd have a template that I could quickly update and then upload each week.
It was a good idea, but it wasn't working. Actually, it worked once, but the next week the file wouldn't upload. And once a quiz has been taken by the students, I could no longer export the questions. In frustration, I've continued creating the quizzess in Moodle.
Today I finally took the time to play around with different options. Here's what I discovered.
One of the many ways we use it is for quizzes. The students tell me they prefer to take their quizzes and tests in Moodle because they get instant feedback. I prefer it because for low-level things like spelling tests, they take half the time and are scored correctly by someone besides me.
Actually, they have taken much longer, but the time has been coming out of my prep time instead of my class time. Creating the quizzes in Moodle is a fairly tedious process. It is easy and works well, but it is putzy.
I knew that the Moodle quiz module would import GIFT files, but I wasn't having much luck getting that to work. I incorrectly assumed that if I exported the files in GIFT format and opened them with TextEdit, then I could do a quick "Save As" command and voila! I'd have a template that I could quickly update and then upload each week.
It was a good idea, but it wasn't working. Actually, it worked once, but the next week the file wouldn't upload. And once a quiz has been taken by the students, I could no longer export the questions. In frustration, I've continued creating the quizzess in Moodle.
Today I finally took the time to play around with different options. Here's what I discovered.
- Don't start with exported question. Open a new document in your text editor.
- Make sure the text editor is set to use plain text, not any flavor of rich text.
- Leave a blank line between each question, otherwise all the questions import as one big question.
- Make sure the file has the suffix .txt
Sunday, March 12, 2006
eMates Save the Day!
The more I play with them, the more impressed I am with the old eMates a colleague rescued for us. Their main application suite includes a word processor, a spreadsheet and a drawing program, all of which are intuitive and responsive. The eMates came loaded with an interactive tour and a training program to get you up to speed with the applications. Within 15 minutes my students were enthralled. Within 30 minutes, not only were they feeling comfortable with the machines, they were using them to write their next blog posts.
Their rugged clamshell design includes a sturdy handle so carrying them around the classroom was easy. The screens even have a backlight button which meant the pairs of students could lay on the ground under their desks-- for some reason this was a popular seating choice during this activity. I suspect it felt a bit like being in a cave or a tent with a flashlight on.
Despite charging, about half of the eMates needed to be plugged in to work. The others are still capable of retaining a battery charge. That amazes me. My classroom only has 3 outlets since 1.5 of the walls are movable. We have to charge the eMates in shifts. Fortunately, they have charging indicator lights on the top that change from orange to green when they are charged. That makes it easy for a child to monitor them and swap the plug to a different machine to get them all charged.
We tried out the eMates last fall and then haven't touched them again because of the fatal hinge problem that causes dried out old hinges to uncoil and poke through the thin cable the carries the video signal and the digitizing signals inside the computer. (The eMates have touch screens, hence the digitizing signal.) When we tested them last fall, only one showed signs of this type of damage, so I was hoping to hire my father to fix all the hinges. This is an involved process so it is slow going. I finally decided that we just needed to start using them. Our compromise is that now that we have opened them, we are not shutting them again. We figure if we don't move the hinge, no further damage will occur before we can get them fixed.
My jobs this weekend include...
Their rugged clamshell design includes a sturdy handle so carrying them around the classroom was easy. The screens even have a backlight button which meant the pairs of students could lay on the ground under their desks-- for some reason this was a popular seating choice during this activity. I suspect it felt a bit like being in a cave or a tent with a flashlight on.
Despite charging, about half of the eMates needed to be plugged in to work. The others are still capable of retaining a battery charge. That amazes me. My classroom only has 3 outlets since 1.5 of the walls are movable. We have to charge the eMates in shifts. Fortunately, they have charging indicator lights on the top that change from orange to green when they are charged. That makes it easy for a child to monitor them and swap the plug to a different machine to get them all charged.
We tried out the eMates last fall and then haven't touched them again because of the fatal hinge problem that causes dried out old hinges to uncoil and poke through the thin cable the carries the video signal and the digitizing signals inside the computer. (The eMates have touch screens, hence the digitizing signal.) When we tested them last fall, only one showed signs of this type of damage, so I was hoping to hire my father to fix all the hinges. This is an involved process so it is slow going. I finally decided that we just needed to start using them. Our compromise is that now that we have opened them, we are not shutting them again. We figure if we don't move the hinge, no further damage will occur before we can get them fixed.
My jobs this weekend include...
- Buying strip outlets that accommodate the eMates' large power plugs-- a conventional 6 outlet strip can only accommodate two eMate plugs.
- Figuring out how to dock them with one of the Macs in my classroom.
- Finding a serial to USB cable that will allow us to print to the Epson printer that was donated to our class.
- Rewrite my lesson plans for the week to make use of these great machines.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
coComment!
One of my frustrations with blog comments is that when I leave them, I forget to go back and follow the conversation. That has made me hesitant to ask questions in the comments sections of blogs. Fortunately, that is all changing thanks to coComment!
Here's how it works...
I was so inspired by the potential of coComment that I did a bunch of blog commenting over the weekend, asking questions to my heart's content. It felt good to be conversing again.
Here's how it works...
- Go to their website.
- Set up a free account.
- Install their button on your favorites toolbar.
- Add your coComment feed to your RSS aggregator.
- Go leave comments in other people's blogs.
I was so inspired by the potential of coComment that I did a bunch of blog commenting over the weekend, asking questions to my heart's content. It felt good to be conversing again.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Sharing the Things They Care About
I am just starting individual blogs with this year's group of fifth graders. I have been wondering how to set up my curriculum so that my students are reading and responding to blogs outside of our community. I may have hit upon a bit of a plan. As I introduced the blogs, I told them that part of the power of having their own blog was that it could help them share the things they care about, and it could connect them with other people with the same interests.
They got it. As they began their first posts, words poured from their fingers. Students who seemed to struggle with writer's block in other situations were writing amazingly well crafted first drafts on topics such as video games and golden retrievers. Maybe my next step is to help them set up Bloglines accounts, as Clarence has done, and help them learn to find those other blogs of interest.
My fear is that they will find and aggregate inappropriate feeds. I agree that fear-based decision-making isn't a place I like to go, but I also don't want to sabotage this first blogging venture in my school, possibly my district, by taking on too much too soon. For now, I'll just take the first step; I'll check in the blogging permission forms, and start pushing my administrator publish button in our Classblogmeister account.
They got it. As they began their first posts, words poured from their fingers. Students who seemed to struggle with writer's block in other situations were writing amazingly well crafted first drafts on topics such as video games and golden retrievers. Maybe my next step is to help them set up Bloglines accounts, as Clarence has done, and help them learn to find those other blogs of interest.
My fear is that they will find and aggregate inappropriate feeds. I agree that fear-based decision-making isn't a place I like to go, but I also don't want to sabotage this first blogging venture in my school, possibly my district, by taking on too much too soon. For now, I'll just take the first step; I'll check in the blogging permission forms, and start pushing my administrator publish button in our Classblogmeister account.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
The Evolution of an Essay
Essays and fifth graders are not a natural combination. Unlike most of the forms of writing in the fifth grade curriculum, children have no experience with essays. No one sits their preschooler on their knee and reads them essays. No one is making picture books or children's movies of essays. In short, I'm asking them to write something for which they have no internal schema.
Earlier this year we made a few quick jabs at essays. In truth, they were more opinion pieces rather than essays. They were written in response to questions from the local newspaper, such as "What do you fear?" and "Who has it harder in life, children or adults?" A few of the more advanced writers understood what I mean by introduction, body and conclusion and made good beginner's efforts at including them. Most kids just wrote a few sentences.
After our environmental trip, I assigned them to write a real essay. I took them through all sorts of prewriting to generate ideas of what they learned on the trip. We did mapping exercises to discover ways to organize their ideas. We practiced writing introductions.
After all of that, we went to the lab and they wrote. What they wrote bore no resemblance to an essay. The first ones "done" wrote one informal paragraph with no apparent organization. The ones who took longer to finish wrote lovely travelogues that began when we boarded the bus and went straight through until they got off the bus back as school four days later.
I wasn't surprised to see that we had no essays. In the past I would have tried to conference with my students. However, as I've mentioned before, that hasn't worked well for me. The conferences rarely lead to real change, and the students who aren't in the conference at that moment are difficult to keep on task.
This time, I had them upload their essays into an assignment module in Moodle. I added a copy of the assignment rubric as a resource. As the projects came in, I was able to score them against the rubric, and then leave the children comments.
Before the class logged in to Moodle the next day, I discussed the difference between a travelogue and an essay. I assured them that we would keep their travelogues. They were worthwhile and a good way to remember the trip. The advantage of word processing was that we could save a copy of their travelogue and turn that into an essay without having to start again from scratch. We also revisited the rubric which to make more sense to them now that they had their writing in front of them. Students gamely logged in, read their comments and went about revising their work.
When I logged in that evening, I was amazed. The students were truly transforming their pieces into essays. They had introductions that introduced the topic and their main ideas. Each main idea had it's own paragraph with supporting details. Some students had even written a semblance of a conclusion. These are recapping conclusions, rather than "draw it all together and then make a further point" conclusions. But at this stage in the game, I'll take any conclusion I can get.
Of course not every student was at this point, but the majority of them were. This is much better success than I've ever had with face to face conferences. I'm not sure why this has been so successful. Is it that they can reread the comments? Maybe, but I'll wager that it is the combination of comments with an easy way to revise their writing without having to write it all by hand, again.
None of this is rocket science. I've seen for years that word processing generally makes fifth graders more willing to revise. But this Moodle conferencing has taken it all to a new level.
I'm excited for our next assignment; I'll set it up as a workshop instead of an assignment. Students will receive two other students' assignments to score and an attempt to score their own assignment. I'm hoping that evaluating other people's writing will be educational for them. This entire process is proving highly educational for me.
Earlier this year we made a few quick jabs at essays. In truth, they were more opinion pieces rather than essays. They were written in response to questions from the local newspaper, such as "What do you fear?" and "Who has it harder in life, children or adults?" A few of the more advanced writers understood what I mean by introduction, body and conclusion and made good beginner's efforts at including them. Most kids just wrote a few sentences.
After our environmental trip, I assigned them to write a real essay. I took them through all sorts of prewriting to generate ideas of what they learned on the trip. We did mapping exercises to discover ways to organize their ideas. We practiced writing introductions.
After all of that, we went to the lab and they wrote. What they wrote bore no resemblance to an essay. The first ones "done" wrote one informal paragraph with no apparent organization. The ones who took longer to finish wrote lovely travelogues that began when we boarded the bus and went straight through until they got off the bus back as school four days later.
I wasn't surprised to see that we had no essays. In the past I would have tried to conference with my students. However, as I've mentioned before, that hasn't worked well for me. The conferences rarely lead to real change, and the students who aren't in the conference at that moment are difficult to keep on task.
This time, I had them upload their essays into an assignment module in Moodle. I added a copy of the assignment rubric as a resource. As the projects came in, I was able to score them against the rubric, and then leave the children comments.
Before the class logged in to Moodle the next day, I discussed the difference between a travelogue and an essay. I assured them that we would keep their travelogues. They were worthwhile and a good way to remember the trip. The advantage of word processing was that we could save a copy of their travelogue and turn that into an essay without having to start again from scratch. We also revisited the rubric which to make more sense to them now that they had their writing in front of them. Students gamely logged in, read their comments and went about revising their work.
When I logged in that evening, I was amazed. The students were truly transforming their pieces into essays. They had introductions that introduced the topic and their main ideas. Each main idea had it's own paragraph with supporting details. Some students had even written a semblance of a conclusion. These are recapping conclusions, rather than "draw it all together and then make a further point" conclusions. But at this stage in the game, I'll take any conclusion I can get.
Of course not every student was at this point, but the majority of them were. This is much better success than I've ever had with face to face conferences. I'm not sure why this has been so successful. Is it that they can reread the comments? Maybe, but I'll wager that it is the combination of comments with an easy way to revise their writing without having to write it all by hand, again.
None of this is rocket science. I've seen for years that word processing generally makes fifth graders more willing to revise. But this Moodle conferencing has taken it all to a new level.
I'm excited for our next assignment; I'll set it up as a workshop instead of an assignment. Students will receive two other students' assignments to score and an attempt to score their own assignment. I'm hoping that evaluating other people's writing will be educational for them. This entire process is proving highly educational for me.
Moodle Evangelizing
I was writing a letter to a dear friend and former colleague. I was blathering on about...
Imagine my delight when she wrote back very excited about Moodle and appreciative that I'd gone into so much detail because now she is getting ideas on how to implement it at her school -- I feel like a grandparent who just discovered someone who actually enjoys looking at pictures of my grandchildren.
- what I've been doing with the Moodle
- how it is helping me get a handle on my overwhelming paperwork
- how the children are appreciating the immediate feedback on quizzes
- how my students who hate to read and write don't seem to realize they are doing both when they take part in the chats and the forums
- how kids are logging in from home to journal with me
- how the journals are helping me forge connections with children who now seem to see me as an ally instead of just another person getting in their way
- how the ability for me to leave comments on their assignments is leading many children to improve their writing through revision
- how I look forward to logging into the Moodle-- a feeling I don't get when staring at a pile of worksheets
Imagine my delight when she wrote back very excited about Moodle and appreciative that I'd gone into so much detail because now she is getting ideas on how to implement it at her school -- I feel like a grandparent who just discovered someone who actually enjoys looking at pictures of my grandchildren.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Workshops or Assignments
I've been exploring Moodle's workshop module. For now, I learned it is too complicated for me to use with my current essay assignments. I really love the idea that students would be scoring and commenting on their own and two other students' essays based on the rubric I gave them. Unfortunately, I had trouble getting it working and in the interest of time, I switched it to an assignment. Now I see that for this point in our Moodle experience, that was wise. It is the next step up in terms of complexity. I think after students understand how to upload files and better understand scoring writing projects with a rubric, then we will be ready for a real online workshop.
Even just doing this as an assignment, I'm loving the interactions that Moodle allows. When I try to conference personally with 26 kids, it doesn't work. The other students are not focused enough to be gainfully employed while I conference, and the face to face conference isn't giving me all the impact that I want. Students generally enjoy the feedback, but it doesn't often lead to improvements in their writing.
With the assignment module, I am able to leave students replies, either inline or separately. I am also able to give them a score that I can change later. This is good for students since they can refer to the comments as much as needed, and the comments don't get lost. It is good for me since I can write the replies outside of class, freeing me for lots of mini-classes during class time.
Even just doing this as an assignment, I'm loving the interactions that Moodle allows. When I try to conference personally with 26 kids, it doesn't work. The other students are not focused enough to be gainfully employed while I conference, and the face to face conference isn't giving me all the impact that I want. Students generally enjoy the feedback, but it doesn't often lead to improvements in their writing.
With the assignment module, I am able to leave students replies, either inline or separately. I am also able to give them a score that I can change later. This is good for students since they can refer to the comments as much as needed, and the comments don't get lost. It is good for me since I can write the replies outside of class, freeing me for lots of mini-classes during class time.
Moodle Grades
I've been a slow learner this week. Although I know about our browser woes, I started new discussions with students in their private forums that we are using as journals. I ended up with sad children who thought I hadn't written back to them because they couldn't see the second message since Internet Explorer mashes all of the links together. I finally figured out what was going on and happiness reigns once more.
I did my first grading in Moodle. Since I will be coordinating the environmental ed trip next year, I set up two forums. One is for students to tell me what was great about this year's trip; these are the things I shouldn't change. The second forum is for discussing ways to make the trip better.
My initial standards are quite low. If they successfully posted in both forums, and their post was at least remotely on topic, they earned full points. The grading itself was easy. In the forum set up, I designated how many points were possible and that I was the only one who could give grades. Now when I read a response, there is a drop down menu to let me select the score. The students don't see that option.
If I had allowed them to give grades as well, there are all sorts of interesting options. They could grade each other's comments in regards to relevance or with points. The Moodle can even do some fancy score balancing if numerous scores are given for one response.
For now we kept it simple. I scored the responses that were submitted. The next day, I showed the children how to access their grades primarily so they had an easy was to see if they had posted in both forums. They seemed to like checking their grades, especially since they were getting such good ones.
I don't keep my main gradebook online yet, but this lets me see the power in doing that. I think there is some sort of plug in that would allow me to post my Easy Grade Pro records online with parent passwords. I may look into that for next year, even though that really ups the pressure on me.
In any case, I once again had children pouring over each other's responses, and when their computers allowed them to do so, they left replies. This still enchants me since the children reading through all these responses are so often the ones who refuse to read during our silent reading time, and refuse to write on writing assignments. I hope they never figure out that these ARE reading and writing assignments.
I did my first grading in Moodle. Since I will be coordinating the environmental ed trip next year, I set up two forums. One is for students to tell me what was great about this year's trip; these are the things I shouldn't change. The second forum is for discussing ways to make the trip better.
My initial standards are quite low. If they successfully posted in both forums, and their post was at least remotely on topic, they earned full points. The grading itself was easy. In the forum set up, I designated how many points were possible and that I was the only one who could give grades. Now when I read a response, there is a drop down menu to let me select the score. The students don't see that option.
If I had allowed them to give grades as well, there are all sorts of interesting options. They could grade each other's comments in regards to relevance or with points. The Moodle can even do some fancy score balancing if numerous scores are given for one response.
For now we kept it simple. I scored the responses that were submitted. The next day, I showed the children how to access their grades primarily so they had an easy was to see if they had posted in both forums. They seemed to like checking their grades, especially since they were getting such good ones.
I don't keep my main gradebook online yet, but this lets me see the power in doing that. I think there is some sort of plug in that would allow me to post my Easy Grade Pro records online with parent passwords. I may look into that for next year, even though that really ups the pressure on me.
In any case, I once again had children pouring over each other's responses, and when their computers allowed them to do so, they left replies. This still enchants me since the children reading through all these responses are so often the ones who refuse to read during our silent reading time, and refuse to write on writing assignments. I hope they never figure out that these ARE reading and writing assignments.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Browser Blues
One step forward, two steps back...
Our step forward was that our wonderful technician put Netscape on the old computers in lab B while we were gone at camp last week. Those that are running Mac OS 9.2 are now working well in Moodle using Netscape.
The steps backward come on the oldest computers. Those running Mac OS 8.0 or 8.1 still aren't working well. If students try to post anything, they run into trouble in Netscape because the post button is missing. In Internet Explorer, the posting works fine, but they can't read anyone else's posts because all the post links are smack on top of each other, making it impossible to reach more than the first one or two posts.
Amazingly, the students are making it work. Despite the computers being really slow and them needing to toggle between browsers, they are managing to post and respond. They like Moodling enough to hang in there, ploughing through the difficulties.
I like that they are getting so comfortable with computers, with online environments, with troubleshooting. More importantly, I like that we are now hearing from everyone. When I post a forum question, everyone responds instead of just a few kids. On top of that, lots of the kids receive responses to their ideas. This is in great contrast to a typical fifth grade discussion in which a majority of the kids are so busy thinking about what they want to say next that they aren't listening to what anyone else is saying.
So maybe I need to revise what I said. Maybe it isn't one step forward and two back. Maybe with all this shuffling, side stepping and spinning around, we are getting somewhere. It's a strange dance, but it seems to suit us.
Our step forward was that our wonderful technician put Netscape on the old computers in lab B while we were gone at camp last week. Those that are running Mac OS 9.2 are now working well in Moodle using Netscape.
The steps backward come on the oldest computers. Those running Mac OS 8.0 or 8.1 still aren't working well. If students try to post anything, they run into trouble in Netscape because the post button is missing. In Internet Explorer, the posting works fine, but they can't read anyone else's posts because all the post links are smack on top of each other, making it impossible to reach more than the first one or two posts.
Amazingly, the students are making it work. Despite the computers being really slow and them needing to toggle between browsers, they are managing to post and respond. They like Moodling enough to hang in there, ploughing through the difficulties.
I like that they are getting so comfortable with computers, with online environments, with troubleshooting. More importantly, I like that we are now hearing from everyone. When I post a forum question, everyone responds instead of just a few kids. On top of that, lots of the kids receive responses to their ideas. This is in great contrast to a typical fifth grade discussion in which a majority of the kids are so busy thinking about what they want to say next that they aren't listening to what anyone else is saying.
So maybe I need to revise what I said. Maybe it isn't one step forward and two back. Maybe with all this shuffling, side stepping and spinning around, we are getting somewhere. It's a strange dance, but it seems to suit us.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Which Wiki? or The Trouble Without Email
My friend and colleague John approached me for suggestions regarding an upcoming web project he plans to undertake with his class of fourth and fifth students. He was planning on having them create posters to share information about alternative energy at the end of their energy unit. He then wanted them to be able to easily share that information on the web so that families could see and possibly even respond to it. He was going to create web pages, as he has in the past, but wondered if blogs would better fit the task since families would be able to leave comments.
I pondered it and told him the answer was none of the above. He should use a wiki. I quickly showed him PBWiki and Wikispaces. He looked unconvinced; he's a busy guy and didn't really want to take the time to learn this new tool since he was wishing he'd started the projects LAST week.
I argued that since he was going to set up the entire web site as a template, the kids weren't gaining much in the way of skills. If they used a wiki instead, they would be part of the read/write web because they could do the work themselves and other people could leave them comments. As Clarence has found, they would probably go home and start creating wikis of their own.
To better convince him and to get up to speed for my own upcoming student projects, I decided to set up a How to Wiki wiki for him. I poked around with the various wiki hosting options to see which would best meet our needs. John and I have identified three key criteria for our wikis.
There is a wiki in Moodle, but from what I can tell, it is safely locked up inside the Moodle, so it fails to meet the first criteria.
PB Wiki meets the first two criteria. Wikis can be viewed by anyone, but we can restrict editing privileges to only those people who have our passcode. This would keep out spam bots, but would fail criteria #3.
Wikispaces meets all three criteria, but at a price. Each child receives a separate invite. Accepting the invitation makes them a member of Wikispaces and of our wiki. Since each child is a separate member, the wiki can track which user makes which changes.
It sounds perfect, but it is at this point, that I once again run up against the thorn that keeps jabbing me this year; we don't have student email addresses.
I could use a service such a Gaggle.net, but this will involve getting parent permission. Since we don't plan to use the addresses for correspondence, this sounds like a lot of hassle.
I could create them on my BlueHost account. I think my subscription allows me to create 2500 email accounts. This could be almost as safe as Gaggle.net accounts, since I could set them up in such a way that all messages must stay on the server. However, it will be tedious work to do this for 50 users.
I know that with my mail application on my computer, I can tell the program whether to leave messages on the server or to download them to my computer. I wonder if that can be over-ridden by settings on the actual mail server. If it can, then even if the students tried to use their email addresses, I could monitor them. This is important both because I don't want to give the world unlimited contact with my fifth graders. I also don't want to give my students unsupervised access to each other. Some of them are still at the nasty note writing stage. I don't want to give them another tool to use for that, since the tool isn't going to be in use for positive activities as well.
How does everyone else deal with this need for student email accounts when setting up Moodles, blogs, wikis and other shared online spaces? Please share with me how you have overcome this problem.
I pondered it and told him the answer was none of the above. He should use a wiki. I quickly showed him PBWiki and Wikispaces. He looked unconvinced; he's a busy guy and didn't really want to take the time to learn this new tool since he was wishing he'd started the projects LAST week.
I argued that since he was going to set up the entire web site as a template, the kids weren't gaining much in the way of skills. If they used a wiki instead, they would be part of the read/write web because they could do the work themselves and other people could leave them comments. As Clarence has found, they would probably go home and start creating wikis of their own.
To better convince him and to get up to speed for my own upcoming student projects, I decided to set up a How to Wiki wiki for him. I poked around with the various wiki hosting options to see which would best meet our needs. John and I have identified three key criteria for our wikis.
- They need to be readable by families and other schools.
- They need to be protected to some degree from spam, but still allow outsiders to leave comments.
- They need to track who makes what changes, so we can track malicious editing back to the person who did it.
There is a wiki in Moodle, but from what I can tell, it is safely locked up inside the Moodle, so it fails to meet the first criteria.
PB Wiki meets the first two criteria. Wikis can be viewed by anyone, but we can restrict editing privileges to only those people who have our passcode. This would keep out spam bots, but would fail criteria #3.
Wikispaces meets all three criteria, but at a price. Each child receives a separate invite. Accepting the invitation makes them a member of Wikispaces and of our wiki. Since each child is a separate member, the wiki can track which user makes which changes.
It sounds perfect, but it is at this point, that I once again run up against the thorn that keeps jabbing me this year; we don't have student email addresses.
I could use a service such a Gaggle.net, but this will involve getting parent permission. Since we don't plan to use the addresses for correspondence, this sounds like a lot of hassle.
I could create them on my BlueHost account. I think my subscription allows me to create 2500 email accounts. This could be almost as safe as Gaggle.net accounts, since I could set them up in such a way that all messages must stay on the server. However, it will be tedious work to do this for 50 users.
I know that with my mail application on my computer, I can tell the program whether to leave messages on the server or to download them to my computer. I wonder if that can be over-ridden by settings on the actual mail server. If it can, then even if the students tried to use their email addresses, I could monitor them. This is important both because I don't want to give the world unlimited contact with my fifth graders. I also don't want to give my students unsupervised access to each other. Some of them are still at the nasty note writing stage. I don't want to give them another tool to use for that, since the tool isn't going to be in use for positive activities as well.
How does everyone else deal with this need for student email accounts when setting up Moodles, blogs, wikis and other shared online spaces? Please share with me how you have overcome this problem.
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