Sartz’s Blog

A question which I get asked a lot is what’s the difference between a Wiki and a Blog. The answer as is often the case with these Web 2.0 tools not particularly clear cut. However the definition which I always fall back to is that a Blog is one person publishing to many. A blog is the Web 2.0 equiavalent of a journal, except that people can access it easily and involve themselves in a dialogue with the author. A blog then is a “one to many” document and is a great way to encourage students (and adults) to write. A wiki is a very similar sort of beast. However a wiki allows a group of people to work on a task collaboratively. When you use a wiki you can still add similar content as you would in your blog, but you have the added advantage of allowing others to contribute to the wiki as well.

So does this mean that a wiki is a better tool to use in the classroom than a blog? No I don’t think so, although some might disagree, both tools have their uses. For me at least I have discovered a new found freedom in being able to post to my blog. I think of this blog is mine it’s quite personal and as such creates ownership for the blogger. A wiki on the other hand is a collaborative tool and belongs to the group. The wiki however has its place in the classroom and can be used a variety of ways to encourage collaboration. Not only that but there is quite an array of free wiki’s out there which we can use.

Now that I am comfortable in my blog, I have started to probe the surrounding cyberspace to find a wiki to call my own. After a quick Google search, I narrowed my list of hopefuls down to three wiki’s wikispaces, wetpaint and pbwiki. All of these wiki sites provide a decent wiki and have varied features.
 

Wikispaces provides a solid platform for wiki’s it has plenty of storage space for files (2Gb) and is very easy to use. When you first join wikispaces you will notice that ad’s appear on your page, you will have to click on the upgrade link to notify wikispaces that you are an educator and they will remove all of the ad’s and enable a couple of other features for your wiki. The page editing tools are pretty standard but there is a huge array of widgets that you can add to your page that range from calendars to movies or flash interactives. My one gripe about wikispaces is that you are very limited in the way the page looks with only a limited range of features being available to change the look and feel of the page.

It is only fair to mention that pbwiki is still in beta which means that they are still adding features to it. But I have to say I was a little disappointed with the lack of ways in which I could change the look and feel of the page, with only one style and 10 color combinations I felt a little limited in how I could personalise the page. Having said that I really liked the design of the page, it was easy to navigate and looked good. pbwiki also places the discussion threads on the bottom of the wiki page (much like a blog), a feature that I didn’t like but may suit others better. pbwiki is ad free without upgradeing which was nice and had 10 Mb of file space which was a little on the small side, but I guess people could use Google Docs or Xdrive to store the files and then just link across to them from pbwiki. pbwiki did have a great security system though and enabled a myriad of security settings.

I only set up my wetpaint account last night but have been impressed by the features which it has. Each page in Wetpaint has several built in tabs including a Photo Gallery, To Do List, Discussion Forum, etc. The actual pages look great with enough eye candy to keep anyone happy. The security features on the site are pretty standard but has enough flexabilty to set it up the way you want. My biggest gripe about wetpaint is that you can only send a maximum of 40 files to the wiki. This doesn’t include images but is still somewhat limiting. Wetpaint also has a lot of ad’s on the pages, but these can be removed if you are an educator and apply to wetpaint for the ad’s to be removed.

So which one should you use? It depends on what you want to do. If you don’t have a lot of dccuments to send up, I think Wetpaint might just fit the bill nicely. If you are looking at placing lots of files on your wiki but don’t need the eye candy then wikispaces is for you. It might also be worth visiting pbwiki over the next few months, I suspect that they will be making a lot of changes and may well be a player in the future.

I have just finished listening to the Ed Tech Crew’s latest podcast where they interviewed Chris Betcher. The Interview was on Interactive Whiteboards, but thats not what I wanted to write about. For me Chris always interviews well and has a common sense approach to ICT for “real” teachers that I find refreshing. The interview got me thinking about how we use ICT as educators, and then I surprised myself by having an irresistible urge to write about it on my Blog. Now being a bit of a Newb to Blogs this came as a bit of a revelation. How does a Science teacher who has always hated English make the transition from “I don’t wanna write” to “Hmm think I might publish this on my blog”.

Now normally I would just remind myself that I am a Geek and thats what Geeks do. BUT, during the last few weeks, I have been working with Year 7 students and now whenever I see them they tell me something new about their blogs, they are accessing each others blogs from home, their parents are leaving comments, the principal is leaving comments for the kids and 7D is a buzz in “Blogdom” as they put it. So I might be a Geek and terribly uncool but surely this group of Year 7 students can’t all be Geeks surely some of them are cool. Maybe Blogs are the “Killer App”, the Holy Grail, the tool which teachers, students and parents can all use, common ground for all.

Is it really common ground for all though? The answer at least IMHO is yes, Yes, YES. We can all participate in blogs at least once we have conquered our initial fear of “what if someone reads this?” Having the confidence to actually post on a Blog is a big thing. In fact this is probably my first real Blog entry where I have just, well rambled on really. But now that I am in the groove theres no stopping me. I have moved on from the “Jeez I hope no-one reads this” to “WooHoo 3 people read my post”, who knows maybe this post could even get 4 readers. Make sure you leave a comment so I know you visited.

We often talk about Web 2.0 engaging students, but I think that there is at least as much engagement on the part of the teacher. Admittedly I have only really worked closely with one teacher so far (will be expanding my empire soon though) and admittedly she was pretty engaged to start with but the journey which she has taken over the past 2 months has been incredible. She started as a self confessed ICT “noob”and in a very short period of time has progressed to running 3 Blogs and moderating 25 student blogs. From someone who didn’t know the difference between a widget and an RSS feed, to someone who just talks about Twitter as if its the communication tool of choice for everyone (It is isn’t it!)

Blogs Rock, no discussion needed, I just “luv’s em to pieces”.

Before I could even blink the holidays are over and week 1 has finished in Term 2. My holidays were great, although a little chilly as we were camping at Bright and Echuca, but we were lucky to get lovely sunny days on the whole. Needless to say we spent the week fishing for trout and touring the lovely green countryside.

This week I was lucky enough to be invited to take a Year 7 class in Swan Hill to get them started on their very own blogs. The kids were great and really embraced being able to publish their work to an authentic online audience. By the end of 3 lessons we had established the students blogs and had some very serious discussions about cyberbullying and what it might mean to them. By 8.00 that night the students were still publishing to their blogs and several parents were contributing as well. I am really looking forward to seeing what these students will produce over the next few months. Well done guys a really enjoyable day.

The next day was a quick trip down to Bendigo to meet with the other coaches and pick up a brand spankin’ new laptop. During the trip to and from Bendigo I caught up with the news that Al Uptons (A well known educational blogger in South Australia) blog had been shut down by the South Australian Ed Dept. It would appear that in someones opinion he was publishing to much personal information about his students. This is more than a little worrying as this guy has been blogging with considerable success for 5 years with his kids. The news has made it onto the international radio arena. It is well worth taking a look at his website as it is a good example of some of the problems which educators will face when using blogs.

I also journeyed out to Sea Lake for a day of reporting with MarkBook this week and had a great day working with the staff out there. I also discovered Twitter and Flock this week, Twitter is an addictive little “chat” program which can be implanted into blogs and wikispaces and Flock is a brand new browser from Mozilla which is geared up to make blogging, twitter, facebook, etc much easier. As the start up screen says in a social networking browser and well worth a look if you are a bit addicted to Web 2.0 stuff.

The end of the term is upon us and as always it has absolutely flown by. I have decided to make this Blog a record of some of the things which I encounter during my time in schools. Hopefully this will serve to jog my memory in the future and may well be of use to someone out there who is interested in the way ICT is used throughout the Swan Hill area. In the future I will be adding to this Blog every week, but for now the rest of this post is my thoughts on what I have encountered during this semester.

So far I have visited 11 of the 23 schools which are in the Swan Hill area. It always amazes me how willing the teachers are to welcome you into their school. As with most things the schools I have visited have been at a range of levels with their skills and access to ICT hardware, but the one common thread which I find in all schools is their willingness to listen and to give new things a go. Although some teachers are wary of taking big steps with ICT, all teachers are willing to try things in bite (or maybe its byte) sized pieces and before they know it they are creating lesson using Interactive Whiteboards, wikis and all manner of other things. “Scotty” in Swan Hill is a prime example, she has gone from being a Blog “Newbie” to running multiple blogs with students from several year levels. I am certain that her blogs (DeScotty & Scotty7D) will be well worth revisiting as the year progresses and she is already making plans of better ways for her year 7 and 12 classes to access this wonderful tool, including a “Heroes” blog in the lead up to the Olympic games.

Many schools have requested assistance with the creation of Intranet and Internet sites and working with these teachers has also been great and I am looking forward to working with these teachers in the future to enhance their classrooms through the use of many other ICT tools including Interactive Whiteboards. IWB’s seem to be the hot topic in schools at the moment with many schools seeking advice and what sort of IWB they should buy and how they might best use them. I have to say that I have really enjoyed using the TeamBoard and was very very impressed with the new Mimio unit which was just great to use. One thing which teachers seem to be struggling with is ideas of how to best use IWB’s, next term I think that this will need to be something which I will focus on and have made a few tentative contacts to start up an IWB group across a few schools.

Most schools that I have visited have now done the ePotential survey and we have designed a walk through for teachers to assist them in making specific ICT goals which they might use in their P&D plans. Most schools have done very well in this survey especially when compared against the rest of the state. It would appear that ICT leadership is one weakness which needs to be addressed (Statewide) and as the year progresses I would hope to find ways to start to address this deficit as well. It has been great to see so many schools who are well equipped with regard to ICT around the area, and the Principals which I have worked with have been wonderful with regard to planning for the ICT needs in the future. Data has also played a big part in this, and I have worked with On Demand Testing, Early Years Numeracy Interviews, AIM, Online POLT, etc in several schools. Getting this stuff into an easy to use format for schools has, at times, been a real challenge and has caused more than a few headaches, but with the help of these schools leadership teams I feel that we have kicked more than a couple of goals on the data front.

I have also had a pretty steep learning curve during this term. It would seem that my time as VCE Manager at Swan Hill College had made me a little “soft” with regard to new technologies. After 7 weeks though I am pleased to say that I am a web 2.0 addict. I obviously have a Blog (Yep your reading it), a wiki (Which have plenty of resources on it including a new and improved Student At Risk Mapping Tool) and have recently arrived in the wide world of podcasts, which has been really blowing me away.

Well thats about it for Term 1 2008. Have a great Easter guys, next term is going to be a big one.

Catch Ya Later

Sartz