Pi 2.0 – Joy

I looked at both Brian’s and Dave’s wikis.  This is a great way to share projects.  I noticed that none of Brian’s students had any discussion going, but Dave’s did– did he require them to post comments and discuss?  I have found with both my blogs and wikis (in my classes) that students won’t comment or discuss unless you actually ask them too.  I don’t know if they read eachother’s work and just don’t comment, or if they actually don’t read eachother’s work.

I use a wiki in my upper level Spanish class, a googledoc.  After seeing Alan November, I was inspired by his idea of assigning a daily class scribe (different kid every day) that posts notes on the document.  This has gone well in my class.  Kids post like they should and use it to study before the test.  I check it to see that they are including everything that is most important.  I will go on and post questions, and highlight errors, and generally someone will get on and make corrections and answer the questions at some point.  I count their participation on the googledoc as part of their participation grade, so they are motivated.  And I created their test questions based on the list of notes they create.  I think they all use it to study.  I think it has helped them.  And it helps me too!  I remember what exactly I have covered, and can see that they are understanding/not understanding.

Since the last post, I have been experimenting with a lot of new web tools on my own.  Some of which were part of task 6!  I also use my GoogleReader pretty much every day– it stuck!

I have been looking at TeacherTube, though I don’t use it nearly as much as YouTube.  Maybe because I find more authentic material from other countries on YouTube– it’s more international.  I have played around with Jing and Skype– and even found a class in Mexico to Skype with my upper-level Spanish class next term. 

I mentioned earlier in my blogging that it is such a shame that in language class we aren’t connecting more with classrooms abroad.  So I have been focusing on that the last couple of months and in addition to the class in Mexico, have found a class full of epals in Spain to correspond with my Spanish 1 kids.  They are sooo motivated by this and some even want two epals!  We start emailing next week.  It took many many emails to teachers on epals.com and globalgateways.com, and I almost gave up, but I am so glad I didn’t and think it will be worth all the trouble 10-fold.

Building my reader…

I have added a lot of friends’ blogs, some foreign language education blogs, and two news feeds– one of Obama and one of Palin.  I am a little obsessed with the election (like every one) and didn’t really have a good way of keeping up with the headlines.  This should help.  I can definitely see how it’s important to limit subscriptions because I have already wasted hours skimming!  ay!

I am having fun with my reader.  A lot of my friends have blogs where they write about their lives, or photo blogs of their babies, so it is nice to have them all there in the same place.  I used to have to click to all of them from my bookmarks.  The only issue for me is that I don’t use Google for email, so having another thingo to log on to is annoying sometimes.  But I do use GoogleDocs, so I guess that’s the same login.

On the Student 2.0 blog, I read about a student’s interpretation of the shift that is happening (or needs to happen) in education.  It is not just about incorporating technology per se, but about incorporating the culture of learner-centered and learned-contributed education that this technology has created.  Web 2.0 has created a generation that is used to contributing, having a voice, creating content.  Not just sitting in front of a screen and absorbing the content.  At Paideia we take this learner-centered approach more than most.  It’s considered progressive right now.

I liked reading the blogs.  I got caught up in the one about homework for way too long.  But it is so rare to have a blog that becomes so popular.  Most of us will never have a comment on our blog unless a class requires it.  

It is neat how the whole idea of news has changes. Any one with great things to say can say them, and every now and then someone becomes a celebrity in the blogosphere. 

The comments are what truly make blogs a different medium.  Instant comments, instant feedback.

I watched a video recently on YouTube  called  ”An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube“ that talked about how some people will be unusually cruel in their comments because of the annonymity factor.