What are the educational implications of a filtered internet?

I’m leaving this open-ended and broad purposely, interpret it as you’d like.

UPDATE: My blog has moved! I’m now over at Kate Says and you can comment on this post there!

One of the things that has been both a blessing and a curse is the fact that I have no overall project that this is fitting into – it’s not part of a history project or a literature circle or anything of that sort. As this is a technology (ok fine, it’s a keyboarding class) class, the objectives are the actual skills involved in editing a wiki (which translate to other web applications) which will then be used in other (core) classes (in an ideal world). The fact that there’s no overall project is nice because the kids get to choose their topic, but they’re having a hard time understanding that they get to choose what their pages are about (wonder why?).
Here are the steps of the project:

1. Learn basic Apple keyboard shortcuts (this makes copying and pasting much easier later on)
2. Learn how to create hyperlinks in Microsoft Word (get to learn this skill before entering the wiki-world)
3. Learn how to open a new tab and navigate between tabs in Safari
4. Learn how to CTRL+click to open links in new tabs or windows
5. Learn how to log in to our wiki on wikispaces
6. Explore the editing features in wikispaces
7. Learn how to create a hyperlink in the wiki
8. Insert pictures on a wiki page
9. Embed video on a wiki page

Again, all of these skills translate to other web content creation and are key digital skills for efficient work online.
We have only made it through step 5 and since we only have one day left, we won’t get to the videos this time around. I plan to start the project earlier with the next group so we can make it through the entire project.

Here are the steps I took to get everything set up:

1. Created an ad-free education wiki on wikispaces
2. Had wikispaces create 30 student accounts (they had it done in less than 24 hours)
3. Created 30 student pages

*Note – the pages and accounts all have corresponding numbers from 1-30. Student 1 has a login that includes “student1″ and will then work on Student Page 1. Much easier for being able to re-use the logins and pages.
Actually teaching the lesson was a lot of fun and although the usual craziness occurred (30 kids on a mishmosh of machines, some craziness guaranteed) the students did a great job and had fun (wait, does that mean they didn’t learn?)

The lessons I learned from this:

1. Wikispaces looks and acts VERY different on a Mac running an ancient version of Safari compared to a PC running Firefox – my school has a Mac lab (only school that has Macs in whole district) and I work on a PC and teach on PCs in the rest of my schools. The main thing was that the color and other editing options didn’t work for the kids on their pages and when they were inserting links, they couldn’t see what it would look like until they saved and went back to the “pretty page”. Say what? Pretty page? Hate to admit it, but that’s what we call the wiki pages that everyone actually sees – it’s the pretty page and the behind-the-scenes page (in edit mode). It works for us!
2. I desperately need a projector in my classroom. I’m getting better and better about giving great descriptive instructions, but I NEED a projector. Need one.
3. None of the tasks in this project were easy for the students. They caught on, but not one of the skills was already known. For all of the talk (not mine) of digital ***** (can’t say the word), online productivity is NOT an inherent skill.
4. No matter how many times I say “Only edit YOUR page”, they’ll still forget and just start working on the home page. 5 kids at once were all working on the home page! 5!
5. I might need to create another wiki for the next group rather than just reusing this one, because the students were disappointed that someone else would be working on their pages that they’d started. No big deal, I’ll probably do that. I will re-use the usernames and logins, though, since they’re generic – even if the kids want to work on their pages outside of my class when they’re out of my rotation, the chance of them being on at the same time as the other student with their login is very slim.

I’m absolutely loving teaching these skills and the very best part? 1/2 of the class was begging to be allowed to work on it over the weekend. ‘Nuff said.

If you have helpful tips for me, I’d welcome them with open arms!

My Related Posts

Blog + Wiki Class Project
Wiki + Blog Project #2
Wiki + Blog Class Project #3
Updates Galore

Resources to help you get started

Apple Keyboard Shortcuts – very simple handout I created for class
Getting Started with Wikispaces – I just found this today after figuring out a lot of this stuff through trial and error – great guide by Liz Davis
Mobile Technology in TAFE Guide to Wikis – Sue Waters’ resource list for teaching with wikis (again, just found this today!)
Wikispaces for Teachers – site for creating your own education wiki
Wikispaces Help for Teachers – FAQ on education wikis
Batch Account Creation on Wikispaces

Note: My blog has now moved to Kate Says – please visit this post there if you’d like to comment or read responses from others!

What is this, an advertising blog? Sorry for the blatant ed- promotions tonight, just all kinds of great stuff to see and share! I was able to wrangle an opportunity to view edmodo (alpha) tonight (due to my wonderful disposition, I’m sure……..or Jeff O’Hara got annoyed that I was so blatantly promoting @edublogs, teehee – you can follow @edmodo, too) and was pretty impressed with how professional the site is and the basic premise. I’m not going to tout this as the next-greatest thing, because that’s honestly up to users. Things become hits because they work, simple as that. As no one is actually using edmodo yet, it’s difficult to predict the popularity/adoption. Personally, I can’t wait to try this out and see how others are using it, I’m always up for new things I won’t be able to use it in the classroom right now due to my insane schedule and position in the district, but if I had a full-time teaching position with full-time students, I’d be chomping at the bit to figure out how best to take advantage of it. That’s the key: teachers need to get in, play around, and figure out how it works with their classroom structure, technology access, and curriculum.

Wait, I didn’t actually tell you what Edmodo is! Well, it’s been spun as “Twitter in the Classroom” on Tech Crunch but it’s just so much more than that (and attaching Twitter to it may be a downside for some who don’t embrace the wonderful world of tweets). I think to label it a microblogging tool is a little simplistic and really diminishes the potential educational uses. From exploring, I’d say it’s a combination of pownce, facebook, moodle and some other things I probably don’t even know about. Some may cringe that I compare it to moodle, but I’m currently deep into moodle right now and the blocks are somewhat similar, as is the concept of posting assignments. The messaging seems rather like pownce to me, much more so than Twitter. The design is a little Facebook-ish at first glance.

The screencast teaser (PLEASE go check it out, I had issues embedding it here) gives a taste of what it looks like and highlights some of the features.

Still confused? Sign up for the beta and for now, see what others are saying:

Edmodo About Page says “Edmodo is a brand new company creating free online tools for the education community. The first tool we are building is a communications tool for Schools, Teachers, Students, and parents for use in the classroom.”

Who is edmodo? (edmodo About page)
“Currently edmodo is owned, operated, & funded by Jeff O’Hara & Nic Borg. Jeff is a network administrator/webmaster for Community Unit School District 200 in Wheaton, Illinois. He also blogs at http://blog.zemote.com. Nic is the webmaster/web developer for Kaneland Community Unit School District 302 in Maple Park, Illinois.”

Matt Long on Classroom 2.0 says (also see this discussion for Jeff O’Hara’s replies):

“So Jeff was nice enough to let me demo the tool this afternoon for about 20 minutes. Cool stuff. Here is a brief writeup.
W/ Edmondo you can create groups (classes). Each one is color coded which is nice and pleasant to view. Once these are created you send out an email to your student that tells them to either add their current account as a student in the “course” or create an account and then add themselves.

Lastly, the navigation on the left could be a bit more obvious. I see Classes, Activities and Groups but those headings don’t really stand out to me. Overall, the tool worked well. I was pleased.”

Somewhat Frank’s post “Edmodo: Microblogging for Education” adds this:

“Built on PHP and MySQL Edmodo enables users to create groups and share files, links, embedded videos and images along with alerts, assignments and events.  Alerts enable user to set quick notices over email and eventually SMS text message.”

And how about this, The National School Board Association is talking about it as well! Their post summarizes Edmodo like this:

“BoardBuzz sees in Edmodo what could be a new trend. As a recent commenter predicted, more and more K-12 infrastructure and classroom management tools will look to web-based solutions. BoardBuzz hasn’t seen Edmodo in action, but we think it might be another great addition to the education community’s library of Web 2.0 tools.”

I asked Jeff a few questions (via Twitter dm) and here are his responses/explanations:

“parents feature will not be implemented in the first release, still working out those details……after a teacher signs up, and creates her classes, a signup code will be generated…..the teacher would then give the signup code to the student to create a login, the student would then automatically be assigned to that class…..during the signup process for the student we will ask the user if they have an edmodo account already, if so, their account would then be associated with a new class……a student will not be required to have an e-mail address, but can provide one if they want to”

Jeff credits his wife for thinking of the no-email requirement! Did you catch that? NO STUDENT EMAIL ADDRESS REQUIRED!!! That’s what has been the sticking point for so many educators on so many of these tools. Thank you edmodo for thinking of this – it is HUGE.

Yet again, here’s the screencast teaser , check it out, sign up for the beta, and take a chance on something new. The world of education is certainly big enough and innovative enough to see if edmodo is the tool we’ve all been waiting for……….and please, we truly don’t need another discussion right now (or at least right here) about educators blindly embracing technology, it’s been said elsewhere. New things come around for a reason, it’s up to the community to decide what works.

After class I created 10 group pages that I will now be using for individual group research. I’m actually glad that this happened because I realized that it will be great to have the group pages – now I can have each group draft their blog posts on the wiki rather than in Word. This will make it much easier if a group member is gone or if one group doesn’t finish before the 10 day rotation is over. A group in the next rotation could just pick up where the other group left off.

This situation is one of many that needs to be addressed before embarking on new technology projects, but what is interesting is that I couldn’t have actually tested this out on my own at home. You can only be logged into one wikispaces account at a time on any computer. What I should have done is send out a tweet to make sure that my idea would work. After class today, I even found a discussion on Classroom 2.0 about this very issue.

Lesson learned – I will make sure to do MUCH more research before trying another new tool in my classroom!

This tip deals with web document composing.  I have been frustrated when typing blog posts and MANY things in moodle because every time I press “enter” after a line, I end up with a double-space.  Now, I’m coming from heavy Microsoft Word use and teaching about single, double, and 1.5 line spacing (in business ed classes), so this is new to me.  I’m used to being able to type my text and then go back and do just about anything with the formatting toolbar or keyboard shortcuts, so editing and composing online has been a bit difficult.  It’s a whole new world to me!  Makes me wonder if teaching all of the intricate formatting in Word, etc is becoming a thing of the past with the numerous options available online today?  I hope not, I’m still kind of partial to Word for anything more than simple text input – old habits die hard   I’m all for new things, but I hate letting go of the old!

Anyway, I learned that in moodle and edublogs, to achieve a single-spaced line, I need to press SHIFT + Enter instead of just pressing Enter.   Just pressing Enter gives me a double-spaced line and that’s not appropriate for all of the instances in which I choose to start a new line.  Now, that may seem exceedingly simple and small (and possibly not important) to many people, but I get very into the vertical alignment and appearance of documents and I really don’t like publishing anything to the web without proper appearance.  This tip helped me greatly! 

I’m working on learning more HTML to make things even more customized, but until then, my new knowledge of  finally being able to do “single spacing” in moodle and edublogs is making me smile

I’m working in moodle creating a course right now and was having the HARDEST time trying to figure out out to get a screenshot with Jing of a right-click menu (or anything related to a mouse-click), since you have to use your mouse to use Jing, therefore losing the image of what you are trying to capture.  If you doubt me, just try it!  Here’s what I came up with after tweeting a call for help and receiving help from @lisibo:

1) I right-clicked on the object, put my mouse where I wanted it, then did CTRL-PrntScrn

2) I opened up PowerPoint (working in Microsoft Office 2007) and just did CTRL-V (paste)

3) Using the cool picture features in PowerPoint ‘07, I was able to resize and crop the image and THEN grab it and edit it with Jing.

4) The image was then ready to embed with Jing!

Here are some examples:

 It took a few more steps, but I think that the images really add to what I’m trying to convey, especially since many people learn best visually.  Who knew this issue even existed?  Surely not me – until I started working in moodle and the wild world of online course development! 

Jing

This screencapture tool rocks my world, and I’m not exaggerating when I say it made my day.  I’m writing an online Intro to Technology (VERY basic and for complete beginners) course and was really struggling to explain a lot of things without visuals.  Well, during a conversation with Eric Brunsell yesterday, he just mentioned the word jing and I threw it in my mental junk drawer.  Today as I’m searching for a good free screencapture app, it pops up and I trot off to find it.  Here’s what I did with it in the first 5 min of downloading it:

Now, these are just my first efforts, but the ease of use and great potential for online tutorials and explanations make Jing a tool that I’ll be using in moodle and my blogs on a daily basis.  If you’re in love with another screencapture app, please share so I can compare!

Tumblr

I started researching other blogging platforms in the name of knowing what I teach and stumbled upon tumblr (heard about it on twitter awhile ago, but never explored and forgot about it). This one I’m still VERY new to and I’m sure I haven’t quite gotten it yet, but it’s a really simple blogging (but without commenting feature) platform that allows you to add different types of media extremely easily.  You can blog quotes, pictures, text, video, and chats as well as feeds from your other sites.  Mine is still so new that it hasn’t updated the feeds yet, but from what I understand it will automatically post links to new posts on this blog and my del.icio.us links.  One of the things that I really love is the quote feature, since I’m big on just throwing out sayings.  Here’s what my test quote looks like on tumblr:

I’ll keep exploring tumblr - I think what I’ll be using it for is my non-edtech blogging needs………..like my strange desire to ALWAYS share when I’ve found a cool new book or product - right now my friends and family are subject to mass emails saying “you MUST read this, or you “MUST” buy this   (If for some reason you’re interested, you can check out Kate Says)