Wikis are a cool idea. I liked the idea I read about doing collaborative note taking on a wiki. Students would need to contribute information, make comments, ask questions, give their opinion, make connections... That could be a simple participation grade.
With Model United Nations, students are grouped by the country they represent and by the issue they are researching. They could establish a country wiki which would allow them to share their research more easily and an issue wiki to share information about their issue.
With the information learned about their country, each group could create a trading card with a picture and information about their country to share with the rest of the MUN members at meetings.
I have some projects that students work on as a group, such as a WW II magazine. Each group could establish a wiki as a central place to put information, create and edit their assignment.
In the past, groups have had trouble with students e-mailing information to each other.
It seems like there are similarities between wikis and Google Docs. I'm not sure about that.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Thing #12 Community Revisited
Thanks to reading Elmore's Glue, I tried his idea of creating a student badge for a field trip. I missed the badge project when I worked on my mosaic. I take my 11th graders to Rice University Library each fall to begin their research project; my badge is for that trip.
There are a number of positive reasons to have students create a badge. I'm going to have them do that this year.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Thing #15 What will a library look like five years from now?
I use the library a lot between my history classes and Model United Nations activities, so the library is very important to me.
I have observed that many students want to find all of their information on Internet, rather than reading print material. The challenge is in finding internet sources that contain credible research. Another challenge (not limited to information found on the computer) is getting students to interact with sources, rather than simply "cutting and pasting."
The theme of the articles on Library 2.0 seem to emphasize a synthesis of the older look of a print library with the technology offered students today.
One goal of the IB History class is to get students to take on the role of an historian. Part of that involves looking at a variety of sides or interpretations of events. One way to do that is to read books written during the 20th century. As archives are opened or additional research is conducted, new interpretations and descriptions of events are written.
Sometimes the older books give information that newer authors don't include, because of their access to newer information. (But that doesn't mean libraries should be full of "old" books only!)
For history, I think students need both a facility for using the newest technology... which many already have and they need an appreciation for books. I think there is a place for both in the Library of the future.
For me, Library 2.0 means I need to be more skilled at using Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 technology... which is why I'm taking this class! There is certainly a lot to learn.
School libraries are still needed for research and to support classroom learning. The difference between the past and now and the future is the form that the learning takes or will take.
I have observed that many students want to find all of their information on Internet, rather than reading print material. The challenge is in finding internet sources that contain credible research. Another challenge (not limited to information found on the computer) is getting students to interact with sources, rather than simply "cutting and pasting."
The theme of the articles on Library 2.0 seem to emphasize a synthesis of the older look of a print library with the technology offered students today.
One goal of the IB History class is to get students to take on the role of an historian. Part of that involves looking at a variety of sides or interpretations of events. One way to do that is to read books written during the 20th century. As archives are opened or additional research is conducted, new interpretations and descriptions of events are written.
Sometimes the older books give information that newer authors don't include, because of their access to newer information. (But that doesn't mean libraries should be full of "old" books only!)
For history, I think students need both a facility for using the newest technology... which many already have and they need an appreciation for books. I think there is a place for both in the Library of the future.
For me, Library 2.0 means I need to be more skilled at using Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 technology... which is why I'm taking this class! There is certainly a lot to learn.
School libraries are still needed for research and to support classroom learning. The difference between the past and now and the future is the form that the learning takes or will take.
Thing #14 Technorati & Tags
As I understand Technorati so far, is a site for searching for blogs. The tags would help a person find a blog that matches one's interests.
At first I thought that Technorati would not be very useful in a history class. Blogs seem to be about today, current events, right now. I need information about the past.
I did a search of School Library Learning 2.0 at Technorati. Using the blog directory, 248 results came up. When I filtered "tags only", there were no results. I think there were no results because there were too many words. I also filtered using "search blogs" and got 71 results. This gave me a list of people's blogs who were doing school library learning classes.
Using the blog directory gave me too many choices. I liked "search blogs" better. It was much quicker to scan 71 descriptions.
Then I used "search blogs" and put in history+Russia. A lot of the results were about Russia today, but I found a couple of blogs about Russian history! I'm really excited about one of the blogs I found. The writer/author gave his e-mail address so I have written him and asked if I could use his blog in my class and I sent him a link to my school website, so he could see what I teach.
One of his blogs is called "A Soviet Poster A Day" so I hope to get a positive response.
I want to go back to the Technorati site and do more searches for other countries that I spend a lot of time on. It's a good thing it's summer... it takes time going through all of these sites and doing all of these searches but some interesting things are coming up.
At first I thought that Technorati would not be very useful in a history class. Blogs seem to be about today, current events, right now. I need information about the past.
I did a search of School Library Learning 2.0 at Technorati. Using the blog directory, 248 results came up. When I filtered "tags only", there were no results. I think there were no results because there were too many words. I also filtered using "search blogs" and got 71 results. This gave me a list of people's blogs who were doing school library learning classes.
Using the blog directory gave me too many choices. I liked "search blogs" better. It was much quicker to scan 71 descriptions.
Then I used "search blogs" and put in history+Russia. A lot of the results were about Russia today, but I found a couple of blogs about Russian history! I'm really excited about one of the blogs I found. The writer/author gave his e-mail address so I have written him and asked if I could use his blog in my class and I sent him a link to my school website, so he could see what I teach.
One of his blogs is called "A Soviet Poster A Day" so I hope to get a positive response.
I want to go back to the Technorati site and do more searches for other countries that I spend a lot of time on. It's a good thing it's summer... it takes time going through all of these sites and doing all of these searches but some interesting things are coming up.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Thing #13 Delicious
Delicious is an interesting site. I have always kept my use of computers very simple. I don't bookmark, I don't use an address list on my personal computer. I don't want to take the chance of passing on a virus or other bad problems to friends I e-mail.
I like the idea of keeping sites I would like to bookmark on a website. It is neat that I can click on sites I listed and go to that site. That's really helpful. I have my students do some sort of research assignment for many of the units we study. I give them a list of websites to use to help them with their research. Sometimes students tell me about a site they have found and I try to remember to go back and add it to my handout I give them.
If I set up a Delicious account for each of my subjects, I can put on websites. Students can access them and add good ones they find.
I wish there were a way to create folders on Delicious, so I could group the sites around different periods of history. It seems that after a while, the list may get to long and unwieldy.
I think that would be a problem for librarians using Delicious. The list of websites could grow quite substantial and the only way to search through it would be by the use of tags. If you don't use the correct word, you could miss a great site.
I like the idea of keeping sites I would like to bookmark on a website. It is neat that I can click on sites I listed and go to that site. That's really helpful. I have my students do some sort of research assignment for many of the units we study. I give them a list of websites to use to help them with their research. Sometimes students tell me about a site they have found and I try to remember to go back and add it to my handout I give them.
If I set up a Delicious account for each of my subjects, I can put on websites. Students can access them and add good ones they find.
I wish there were a way to create folders on Delicious, so I could group the sites around different periods of history. It seems that after a while, the list may get to long and unwieldy.
I think that would be a problem for librarians using Delicious. The list of websites could grow quite substantial and the only way to search through it would be by the use of tags. If you don't use the correct word, you could miss a great site.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Thing #12 How should one comment on a blog--revisited
I was able to comment on a number of blogs today. Another teacher had commented on one of my postings. I had not replied back, but have now done so. I can see if a person had a blog with many people posting to the blog that it would be really difficult to reply individually to each one, but it also does seem rather rude, if someone "talks" to you, to not talk back.
I also now am a member of the John Wayne forum. It is a blog. I made my first posting on that site today. That was interesting... we'll see what happens. They had a thread about a John Wayne movie I used to show my 7th grade Texas History students, so I wrote about that and why I used the movie in my class.
I also now am a member of the John Wayne forum. It is a blog. I made my first posting on that site today. That was interesting... we'll see what happens. They had a thread about a John Wayne movie I used to show my 7th grade Texas History students, so I wrote about that and why I used the movie in my class.
Thing #11 Library Thing Revisited
When reading another blog, I found out how to add some of my books on Library Thing to my blog, so I'm going to try it.
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