OER and Web 2.0 Teaching Part Two
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Part Two: Networks and Collaboration
In this section, we begin to look at a number of specific tools to help you as teachers leverage collaboration tools and information networks. As is true with the other parts of this curriculum, some of the tools and uses will be most helpful in the classroom, and others will help you professionally before or after class, in planning and reflecting.
Teacher Networks
Activity:
Materials:
- Blank piece of Paper*
- Pen or Pencil
Note: Find a plain piece of paper as big as you have. If a standard sheet is all you have, use that. But if you have something bigger, you will probably feel less constrained.
First, draw a circle in the center of the paper, and put your name in it. Then start to think about all the places where you get knowledge and understanding related to your classroom and curriculum.
Think about places, people, technologies, groups, and practices.
Consider pedagogical knowledge as well as content knowledge-- perhaps some of the resources you use for each are different. Your goal is to map them out in a schema that makes sense to you. There's no "right" way to draw them, but just try to show your connections to all of the knowledge sources that you use.
When you're finished, post your picture online, on your blog, or on your Flickr or other photo-sharing account. Remember, there are no wrong or right answers. But we want to start thinking about our "knowledge maps" (which we could give many other names, including knowledge networks, personal learning networks, or personal learning environments) and how we can expand them with Web 2.0 tools.
Keep your knowledge map the way it is-- as you follow the exercises in this section and the next two, you will probably be able to add new nodes and connections to your drawing. But keep the first one unchanged, so you can see the changes over time.
Wikis
What's a wiki? Who needs one?
The first answer is, "you're soaking in it" right now; you're reading this on a wiki. But to tell you this may not be terribly helpful yet. All of the clues on the top, bottom and sides of this page won't make much sense before you see the big picture of wikis.
In short, wikis make collaborating with others around information much easier.
To put it simply, here's a great little overview video that will demistify the concept of wikis.
Activity:
Watch the video on YouTube that gives a quick introduction to wikis. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY. It's less than four minutes long.
What are the characteristics of wikis that make them good for collaboration?
How, for instance, did the camping trip planning benefit from avoiding email correspondence?
What does it do to social dynamics to have a wiki instead of a group leader who is in charge of organizing trip through emails and phone calls?
Have you seen wikis used in education? Do you have any that you use? Do you participate in any by contributing or editing?
Activity (optional):
Wikispaces.
Did you know that you can create a wiki for your classroom or school for free? Wikispaces is one of several sites that offer free wikis (others include pbwiki and wetpaint). Even better, if it is related to K-12 teaching and learning, your free wiki on Wikispaces will not have any advertisements (which is how the free wikis are normally offered). As of October, 2008, they claim to have given away 100,000 free K-12 wikis.
Brainstorm how you might use a wiki in your teaching and learning. Here are a few thoughts to get you started:
- a wiki for faculty at your school to write about their professional development
- a wiki for your class to contribute to a big report on a big subject-- each student or subgroup contributing a section
- a wiki to allow classes from multiple schools collaborate on a science project
- a wiki to allow international exchange of information among far flung schools
Example: Wikipedia is the best known wiki of all, and the world's largest encyclopedia. Does large mean accurate? That's controversial, even after a few studies, themselves controversial. Biographies of living people seem especially controversial. Yet it's unquestionably a broad and easy resource.
A few questions:
- Do you allow students to use Wikipedia in research projects?
- Do you use Wikipedia professionally? How?
- When doing original research with students, would you consider adding to Wikipedia entries if appropriate? Why or why not?
Wikipedia as an Open Educational Resource: Unlike many printed encyclopedias, Wikipedia allows you to copy parts or all of it without infringing on its copyright. How? Through its http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License [licensing], which stipulates that you are free to copy the material as long as you pass along the copyright notice intact and some other details here; and you can make derivative works as long as those become similarly licensed.
Of course, just because it's legal to copy from Wikipedia does not mean that it wouldn't still be plagiarism to pass it off as one's own work. Nor does this freedom have anything to do with the authority of the articles.
Finally, if you are starting your own wiki, you can decide whether to license the content as Wikipedia does, put it all in the public domain, or keep tight control over its copyright. The wiki itself is just the technology that makes editing and revising easy. You have to decide what you want the users to be able to do.
The "Web Office"
Once upon a time, everyone who bought a computer typically also invested a tidy sum in software bundles to handle their day to day needs. These so-called "office" suites are still around, helping us to handle word processing, complex spreadsheets, communications, and even creating visual presentations.
With the advent of Web 2.0, however, there are a great number of online services that handle many of the same jobs. Some of these are completely free. Beyond cost, they share the benefits of web software- no installation, no upgrades. Many of the services also make storing and organizing the files you create much easier. Instead of having to email a document around to share it, you can just invite others to view it online, or even to help edit it.
There is a growing number of web office tools. In each category, we will look at a few big contenders, and make notes about others you may be interested in.
Word Processing
Buzzword is a powerful way to create and share your documents. Unlike other online word processing sites, Buzzword lets retains WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) capabilities that you might be used to in desktop applications. So the layout you get on screen-- including pagination and image placement-- is the same you will get in print. The interface is extremely pleasant to use; in fact it is easier to do things like resizing pictures in your document than it would be with MS Word. Sharing files is another strength of Buzzword.
A number of English teachers in the middle school and high school years have reported success using it for peer editing and handing in assignments. More thoughts on education uses of Buzzword are here: http://blogs.adobe.com/acom/2008/03/buzzword_for_education.html and here: http://blogs.adobe.com/acom/2008/08/research_on_buzzwords_effectiv.html
Google docs
Google Docs is also free, and also enables sharing documents from many places. With Google docs, you can log in once, and get access to to create and share documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and online forms/surveys. While it's not WYSIWYG, it's lightweight, and like Buzzword, free. You can also turn a Google Doc into a webpage or a blog posting very easily. A number of schools have Google handle their email, and already have access to Google Docs.
Spreadsheets
With spreadsheets, the choices include Google Docs, as well as EditGrid, and Zoho Sheet. For a fuller list, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_spreadsheets. For a feature comparison (note: hosted by EditGrid, see http://www.editgrid.com/user/siulung/Web-based_Spreadsheets_Comparison_Matrix.
Presentations
To make presentations without a desktop program (such as PowerPoint), you can again use Google Docs, or Zoho Show, or the newer Sliderocket. School Library Journal reviewed several of these in February, 2008. A wider review of 13 options is here.
Other utilities
Basecamp
Backpack
Scribd
Activity:
Social Networking
Social Networking in Plain English
Ning
Elgg
Barriers and hurdles with online tools
What barriers have you run into trying out, or using, these tools?
Here are a few of the issues that come up:
- Keeping track of many passwords for many sites
One way to deal with this is to use a program like KeePass, which allows you to put all your passwords in one secure database, and you only have to remember that master password. It's free and open source, and available for Windows, [ http://keepassx.sourceforge.net/ Linux, and Mac].
- Making sure the cool company is still in business a year later
New tools come out pretty frequently, and it can feel risky to make a tool part of your workflow if you are not sure it will be around for a long time. Big, well established companies like Adobe and Google won't disappear overnight. Still, you can keep backups of the files you make on a local computer or storage drive.
- Accessing your files when you're not online.
In some parts of the world, it seems that everyone is online all the time. But that may not be true in your daily life, perhaps not even in your school building. Backup copies are also good to have so you can keep working when not connected.
- Students need (school) email addresses to sign up for the tools.
Related to this is concern about students having official school email accounts. If students use their personal email addresses, it's harder to manage inviting them, and have them collaborate. It's also harder for the school to take action if something inappropriate is posted from a student's personal account.
Question:
What other barriers do you find that keep you from using these tools with kids?
How have you addressed or solved these issues in your school?
Collaboration among teachers and experts
Next Steps
Please explore the next parts of the course:
http://wiki.oercommons.org/mediawiki/index.php/OER_and_Web_2.0_Teaching_Part_Three
http://wiki.oercommons.org/mediawiki/index.php/OER_and_Web_2.0_Teaching_Part_Four
