Tutorial for Wikispaces!

Check this tutorial out, dear colleague! I hope you find this of use! Have fun exploring, experimenting, innovating and creating with your students engaged and at play!


If you want to, students can create their own wikispaces, which is even more fun and meaningful for them. When using this tool you can think of lots of advantages and just a few disadvantages. The advantages on one hand are these:

• Wikispaces provide a chance for students to write to each other, so eventually, they can become active feedback providers for their peers!
• Wikispaces help you incorporate a learning tool for students which is respectful of their learning speed. It moves along with the student's level of skill, and helps the teacher achieve higher results with students in terms of reading and writing outcomes.
• Wikispaces has the power to engage students strongly. Children love computers in a most unexpected way!
• Wikispaces is a powerful ally when talking about discipline! It is amazing how challenging and concentration demanding this web-based, teaching-learning tool is! Discipline improves dramatically as students are authentically focused and quiet.
• Wikispaces help students develop mental skills of a wide range. Cognitive skills can be seen fully at play. Students using wikispaces will be analizing, discriminating, spelling, making choices of register, design, use of color effects, use of spatial reasoning.
• Students are more aware of mistakes and will avoid them permanently. ( They are going to be seen by their peers and they don't like this to happen, they want to look sharp and cool!)
• Students tend to express ideas in a more synthetic manner. Writing is clear in general ( The teacher provides support and feedback for those students who still struggle with spelling...Children will require that you do so for sure!) They want to look neat!
• Wikispaces provide teachers the chance to provide children real, individualized and differentiated instruction. Assessment is permanent and formative. Evidence of teaching and learning is created on a safe and regular basis.
• Wikispaces provide children the opportunity to express their mind.
• Wikispaces will bring into class technology skills because students will be learning typing skills, cyber protocols and the ability to determine or judge the relevance of information and content!

Tell me folks, is it not great!?

The disadvantages I forsee is the ocassional  "out of server" situation. Always keep a plan "B" in case computers collapse! Another disadvantage is that students don't interact much face to face with either the teacher or their peers as much as they would do in a traditional classroom.

Web Tools, 100 Best Sites, and Counting

Checking the list of web sites used in classroom settings, I cannot help thinking computers must become a core part in today's daily instruction. I have been lately found myself creating interactive tests with my notebook applications in my SmartBoard. I know, just like any other honest teacher on Earth, that our students are twenty first century students and therefore, they are more used to being "entertained" by television programs, by videogames and by movies, all media resources that use image, sound and sometimes movement ( sometimes, just the fidgeting of controls or the jerking of vibrating and wireless game divises. Schools, of course cannot compete with all these resources right now. Very often they have very old computers, neglected networks or just uninterested administrators.

I experience day by day, a school where due to budgetary constraints, one out of three computer science teachers, was transfered to another school and now her laboratory is empty, and shut...It is also sad to see that there are two other computer labs that are computer cemeteries ( parts, keyboards, cables and mice, all over the place in a most apalling condition...Not cool, right? Well, I, however , do not surrender and try to keep my students in contact with interactive computer activities on a regular basis. I am always looking for video clips that are related to the reading selections I used in classes with my students. I have them do research and explore the internet. I feel priviledged to have a computer which is not the best ( deck does not open, of course, It does not play video from any disc ) but I have an Internet conection and is my "Master" computer from which I can manipulate and plan SmartBoard Activities. I encourage everyone to utilize computers in class, to let students experience multimedia to the fullest, but guided. I am forcing myself to explore the net and look for meaningful materials and classroom usable websites. I recommend you do the same!Teach students to be responsible with the use of internet and enrich your lessons with meaningful videos, explanatory clips, music and beauty through computers! Thanks

From PC to PLE

New historic times require new points of view. New interpretations of the world are necessary. Needs change with time, and so must change the means to satisfice those needs. Education is no exception. In this video a student challenges the conception of education, and the concept of the internet, all at once. In her video she shocks educators. She represents the current, great challenge education is facing. Education is not presented here as a mechanical process anymore, but as an autonomous continuum of knowledge which is acquired by students independantly. To learn means, now,  to get to know anything on your own. A teacher is not, like in ancient times, the only knowledge source, but rather a guide through all the multiple sources available, particularly the new information technologies. The corelation between education and the internet has tightened and has also, of course, affected the concept of the worldwide web. The internet used to be a huge archive of data, created and used by a selected group of people. Today, the internet is personal, anyone can have acces to it easily and conviniently. Besides that, it is a powerful tool for communication and education as well. Interactive content is available and students are now presented not the flat monodimensional idea of the world but a rather holistic perspective. Multimedia has changed the way people learn. It has turned education into a more interactive activity. The world presents itself now in video and in color, in movement, in sound, in opinion, in beauty, in cultural diversity.

The internet, just as this child has put it, has turned into a Personal Learning Environment. Students can learn and interact at their own pace ( more respectfully that the traditional educational model) They have more engaging writing experiences, they interact with other people interested in the topics of their quest. Students do research faster and easier. Students learn to reflect about what they read and what they write. Students with access to the internet are expanding their worlds and interests. Students can choose now how to do things, they are not puzzle anymore about doing it or not doing it, now it is a matter of HOW I am DOING IT!

See the video at the following link! Leave your comments, please. They are greatly appreciated!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEls3tq5wIY&feature=player_embedded

Pushing Buttons by Learning Technology