21st century literacy specialist!

I always love reading what Kim Cofino has to say at her blog Always Learning or in her Twitter posts as mscofino…which are regular, and packed with questions and ideas. But what I really love is the concept behind her role at the International School Bangkok in Thailand.

Kim explains:

I am the 21st Century Literacy Specialist at the International School Bangkok in Thailand. This position combines my past experiences as a technology facilitator with the wealth of resources available in the library. ISB is actively seeking to build a Learning Hub that successfully blends the traditional role of a library with the requirements of the 21st century global student. My role is to bridge that gap. As the 21st Century Literacy Specialist, my work is focused on helping core subject teachers utilize web 2.0 technologies in the classroom, to create a global and collaborative approach to learning. I enjoy working with my colleagues to design authentic and engaging international projects incorporating social networking, blogs, wikis, and podcasts, and whatever comes next!

Kim’s been telling us all day on Twitter how she has been finishing off the long haul of working on her conference presentation wiki Developing the Global Student: Practical Ways to Infuse 21st Century Literacy Skills in Your Classroom.

Naturally when she finally posted the link I had to take a look.

I think you should take a look too!

You should also take a look at Kim’s post The Slideshow must go on where she tells you a little about the conferences that these materials have been prepared for.

Wepaint wiki – will change the way you collaborate

Wetpaint wikis have now added fully integrated discussion forums into their wikis – which is already a wonderful wiki product!

Michael Arrington in a post at Techcrunch explains that they’ve put a lot of thought into the feature set around these message boards. Posts can be tagged, the view expanded/contracted, there are email notifications of new messages, and the search feature works well. Amazingly, any forum thread can also be turned into a wiki with a couple of clicks.

While the debate continues as to which wiki will now have the share of the Web 2.0 market, when it comes to education use of wikis – this has to put Wetpaint at the front of the pack.

Read the next post to make sure you grab the wiki loaded with benefits for education, or retro-engineer your current wiki to take advantage of the new offer.

From iLibrarian.

Wet Paint wiki – will change the way you teach!

Thanks to a Twitter alert from Jeff Utecht and his recent post over at Thinking Stick, I am thrilled to discover that WetPaint wikis go ad-free for education.

Wow – this is great news!

Wetpaint is by far my most favourite wiki software, but I have not promoted it because of the problem of advertising. Now I believe that Wetpaint should be the ‘wiki of choice’ for school staff – it has a great interface, is easy to use, and has all the features you need to make wikis a part of everyday learning online.

To find out more about qualifying to get ads removed and find great tips for creating education wikis, visit: www.wetpaint.com/education. Then follow the instructions to apply for your ad-free wiki.

Go on – create a Wetpaint wiki for your classroom!

Wetpaint Wiki in Plain English

Love your wiki – wetpaint style!

Instead of focusing on the mechanics of a wiki, this video from Commoncraft Productions is much more about how a wiki can become an expression of passion and why someone would want a wiki.

AND Wetpaint released a Facebook app that enables Facebook members to create full Wetpaint wikis within Facebook. Very cool!

WikiMindMap is a tool to browse Wiki content easily and efficiently, inspired by the mindmap technique.

Wiki pages in large public wiki’s, such as wikipedia, have become rich and complex documents. Thus, it is not always straight forward to find the information you are really looking for. This tool aims to support users to get a good structured and easy understandable overview of the topic you are looking for.

First month of development for this tool – which is nice. I particularly like visual techniques for presenting information to students as part of demonstrating research techniques. Several languages available – be sure to choose the right one for your needs. This visual technique allows you to drill down and refine your ideas as you go.

Two searches for Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 provided the following really interesting entry screens – which pick up the key launch points for investigation on each of these two broad topics.  It’s  also possible to hyperlink these screen shots directly to the search query – once again this is useful when presenting information to students and for pointing them to a specific search focus for research and learning.

Learning is sexy…

….. or so Librarian Chick insists. You might like to drop over to the Librarian Chick wiki – where you will find a big compilation of all kinds of resources.

I am particularly interested in the Books and Audio Books section, because many of our school libraries are looking for good ways of integrating digital and audio book resources.

Digital teaching and multi-tasking via Horizon

I know that many of us are doing it …..joining the digital natives…..but I have just had a really fun hour in the global digital domain doing the following:

1. judging parts of the Horizon project wiki
2. judging Horizon project manager videos
3. listening to a GenTech podcast on copyright and fair use
4. entering results in the Google docs spreadsheet – right there online for us to share (web 2.0 as platform – remember?)
5. watching the results drop in from others around the globe
6. chatting within the Google docs space – using the chat window to collaborate with  colleagues from Melbourne, Dhakka, and Shanghai.

This time, as part of my small role in the Horizon Project, I was specifically looking at the sections on Mobile phones and Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming.

If you haven’t yet picked up on the tremendous work of the teachers and students involved in this year’s version of the Flat Classroom Project, then take a visit to the Horizon Project Wiki, and see how things are progressing.

The Horizon Project – they’re at it again!

I want to thank Julie Lindsay, Vicki Davis and others involved in the Horizon Project for once again showing us the exciting benefits of a global e-learning experience. Aren’t these students just awesome?

Like the award-winning Flat Classroom Project (2006), this new project involves students, this time 60 students in five countries, working together to look into the future of education based upon the Horizon Project Report 2007 Edition by the New Media Consortium and Educause (pdf).

The key trends identified in the Horizon Report which will be explored by the students are:

• User-Created Content
• Social Networking
• Mobile Phones
• Virtual Worlds
• New Scholarship and Emerging Forms of Publication
• Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming

This project (using Wikispaces, Delicious, Slideshare, Ning, Twitter, Meebo, YouTube and many other online tools) is a ‘trip to the future’ where students will envision, create, and discuss what this future will look like withothers around the world. Through their work on the wiki, the students will be researching and experiencing web 2.0 enabled learning in a global community.

Student work will be assessed against three criteria related to the objectives of the Horizon Project.

• To understand, analyze and evaluate the trends highlighted in the Horizon Report 2007based on key ideas and areas of impact.
• To create a project wiki page that details this investigation and synthesis of the material.
• To use Web 2.0 tools to facilitate collaboration as well as creation.

The comprehensive rubric is worth reading. They also made use of ISTE technology standards NETS.S (revised) for ‘What students should know and be able to do to learn effectively and live productively in an increasingly digital world’.Explore the Horizon Project, the Teachers’s Page and the Students Page.

The students come from USA, Austria, Bangladesh, Australia and China.

I have been invited to join the group as a member of the Expert Review Panel, supporting and reviewing the section on Social Networking. I expect to learn a great deal from these wonderful educators!

Vicki Davis, from Camilla, Georgia, has a beaut introduction to The Horizon Project available at Ning.

Julie Lindsay, from Dhaka, Bangladesh, (who is an aussie) has put a nice introduction to the project on Youtube. Horizon Project Introduction.

Technorati Tags: horizonproject07, hz07, flatclassroom, socialnetworking

Student opinions on Social Networking

As a followup from my last post on MySpace, I recommend a visit to Vicki Davis – Edublog Award winner for Best Wiki with her Flat Classroom Project wiki. Vicki leads in Web 2.0 thinking.

On her Westwood School Wiki you will find a comprehensive virtual survey of her 9th and 10th grade classes on MySpace and social networking. If you haven’t got a list of your own for discussions with your students, Vicki’s list provides a great starting point.

Vicki’s Westwood Wikispace was listed as December’s Space of the Month by Wikispaces.

Catch Vicki at Del.ici.ous as brightideasguru, or on her Cool Cat Teacher blog.

Technorati Tags: Web2.0, wikispaces, MySpace, social software, social networking

Wiki Wonders!

Oh……I didn’t know there were so many! Next time you think you might like to use a wiki for some kind of collaboration online, you might want to check in at  WikiMatrix first – an interesting wiki comparison tool.

The site allows you to put wikis against each other and get side by side comparisons. Plus, there are forums and articles that will help in the decision making process as well as assistance throughout the early stages of your “wiki-ing”. Very useful.

From Library Stuff.