In Chapter 3 of Will Richardson's text Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, he provides a step-by-step guide to blogging. As a beginning blogger, this is exactly what I need! In reading this, the "blogger for word" explanation was very helpful, along with the various settings and how to change templates. Through the template description, I was able to go in and begin to customize my blog and really make it my own.
Chapter 4 discussed wikis- this is where I am really feeling uncomfortable! From the info given in session one, I have a general understanding of a wiki. However, until we really dive in and create our class wiki I feel as though the idea will still be very abstract to me. In doing some of my own research on wikis, I stumbled upon this website that gives a list of Early Childhood Classroom Wikis. It was great to see some examples of wikis being used in the early childhood years. I can see how this can be an extremely useful tool in informing parents and the school community about what is going on in the classroom/school.
We will be starting the wiki project this week. It will be great if you can add this wiki site to our own wiki, once you learn how to navigate a wiki.
ReplyDeleteI'm still not sure about wikis or what exactly the purpose is either. I believe that there are different purposes for wikis, but I will have to do more research to see what they are. I am going to explore more with the link that you provided. Thanks for the sharing of early childhood classroom wikis!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about wikis...need more info to better understand...looking forward to the class discussion.
ReplyDeleteLove your new template...could you give me a lesson? Wanted to try this and made an attempt but got scared off! Thanks!
The wiki you have a link to provides all kinds of ideas for teachers to use wikis to stay in touch with parents. A student from spring 2012 who taught preschool used it for parent communication--posting events, sign up for volunteers for field trips, and important announcements. She also used it to communicate what the students were learning in class. Although not all parents used the wiki, she found if she kept it current, it was the go-to-place for parents to get information. Parents of young children generally want to keep in touch with the teacher, and the use of a wiki can be one other way for parents to not only keep up with what is going on, but send messages back, perhaps to a posted email account found on the wiki. Just some thoughts, but definitely explore the wiki you found for more ideas. Once you do, perhaps you can create another blog post about ways to use wikis as a teacher for parent communication or other purposes.
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