Jun
30
2009
Thanks to the MET program I have a fair bit of experience with working with a number of wiki platforms. Here are a few that I have created individually or as part of group …
For ETEC 510 I authored this page on Information Literacy as part of a collaboratively created design wiki. As I am concurrently working on achieving a specialization in Teacher-Librarianship the issue of new literacies is one that I am very interested in.
Information Literacy wiki
Here is one for ETEC 511 on the Economics of Educational Technology…
Here is a wiki that I worked on for ETEC 512 on Cognitive Learning theory….
http://etec512cognitivelearning.pbworks.com/
Reflection…This work in the world of wikis has inspired alot of enthusiasm for the use of wikis in my future classrooms. The ability to work collaboratively while creating a polished and attractive finished project is one that has a huge number of benefits for students and teachers. Not insignificant in this lesson is the opportunity to demonstrate for students how easy it is for anyone to publish information on the web and the subsequent need for critical analysis of the source of all information that they encounter.
In my own work with these wiki platforms I found them to be unanimously user-friendly and intuitive. The use of a WYSISYG environment makes them usable for students even at the mid-primary level. The most surprising aspect of wiki creation was the number of freely available sites to use. With decreasing budgets the school districts are unlikely to spend any money they don’t deem “necessary” and the availability of open-source products makes the pitch to use them that much easier for tech-focused classroom teachers.
May
04
2009
Today is the first day of summer term courses. I am really looking forward to ETEC 565A as it promises to be more hands-on and practical than its theoretical cousins. I can’t wait to explore some different software tools that I have not had experience with yet.
I find that everyone who finds out that I am working on this degree assumes that I must have a great deal of knowledge about different software apps but my experience with the MET has been that the tools are secondary to the theory that underpins them. I am glad to have this opportunity to make use of the applications!