I have just finished a ten-day online course on "wikis" with The Consultants-E. Thank you Kristina! It has been a great experience and I am the proud creator of my very own personal PBwiki entitled "Famous People I know". For the moment it is private because it is in the "beta stage" and as usual with me, I don't feel confident enough to publish it to the www at this stage. However, it is a good example for me to demonstrate to my future students when I return to the Lake School of English next month to do a two-week guest teaching slot.
Wikis are fast and easy to set up. Have a look at the following "Wikis in Plain English" video from Leelefever -"Commoncraft Videos" :
A future project of mine would be to set up a wiki for teachers, for example, to include a bank of warmers and fillers. In my opinion, doing this in a wiki format has many advantages because of the following reasons:
o wealth of ideas ready to use
o group bonding activity
o part of a sharing community
o part of an evolving project
o time saving
o opportunity to learn and grow
o a tailor-made PLE
o dynamic nature to explore
o area for personal reflection
o an arena to use a 21st century E-tool
o engender creativity
The first wikis were produced in the 1990s. Scientists and engineers used them to create dynamic knowledge bases. They have evolved since then and are now created by millions of people from all walks of life.
There are other types of wikis apart from PBwiki such as Wetpaint and Editme. I had a look at Wetpaint and it looks like a fantastic tool with lots of different features to use. I will look at Editme soon.
I have actually been a member of Twitter4Teachers for a few months now and I somehow joined it when I first got into "Twitter". I can be found under the title of "English as a Second Language Teachers". I didn't really fully understand the process until recently but now, with my extra knowledge, things are much clearer. It is a huge bank of teachers from around the world who specialise in certain fields. Check it out for yourself..
The moment is nigh
Well, I am a day away from publishing my guest post slot on Free Technology for Teachers and the butterflies in my stomach are beginning to rumble....The draft is already in the system, just waiting to be tweaked and the "publish" button waiting to be pressed.....I need to check out time zones in the USA as I think Italy is 8 hours behind or forward?? Ahhhh....I think I had definitely better check this very important detail out fairly snappily!
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2 comments:
Thanks for the mention. EditMe has some features specifically geared towards educators - be sure to ask about these when you're having a look. Cheers!
Hi
I will definitely have a good look around the "Editme" features in the near future.
Thank you.
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