Back in October, I asked for advice on how to balance an invitation to present at a conference with the impending birth of my daughter. In the end, I decided to take Chris Lehmann‘s advice and arrange to co-present. In the event that I can’t go, I know the presentation will be in capable hands.
Baby willing, I’ll be co-presenting a short (traditional-style, sorry) workshop on wikis at the New Jersey Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development headquarters in Monroe Twp., NJ on February 12. It will be a 40-minute section of a longer (9am-1pm) workshop entitled Infusing Technology into the Curriculum to Enhance Learning, which will also cover the curricular use of blogs, Skype, Moodle, and social networking. The presenters are teachers from different disciplines (English, Social Studies, Spanish, and Phys. Ed.) who all use these tools in their classrooms. There will also be an introductory piece from our Supervisor of Instructional Tech (I think that’s your title, Don; please correct me if I’m wrong).
It’s not my first conference presentation, but it is my first one involving this technology in which I’ve immersed myself for the past year or so. I’m quite excited about it, and will be putting all the preso notes up at (what else?) the official presentation wiki. The major points I’m considering so far are:
- Wikis as bare-bones content management systems
- Cost (free and ad-free for K12 educators via Wikispaces)
- User-friendliness
- Functionality & security
- Opportunity for students to publish to a global audience & contribute a meaningful product for public consumption
- Examples of student-generated wiki products
I’ll probably also start with Lee LeFever’s Wikis in Plain English, just for good measure. So what am I missing? If you had 35 administrative ears to bend, what about wikis would you want to convey?
Sorry for the lack of seriousness on this one, but I think the original, working title for ‘Reservoir Dogs’ was ’35 Administrator Ears to Bend’.
Sorry for the abrupt seriousness on this one, but I think I’d want to convey the importance of maintaining open networks so teachers and students can benefit from these powerful tools.
Possibly show an example of a wiki for/by educators (such as eduwiki.us) so they can put it in context. May be more receptive if they understand why THEY would want to use it first, then can understand why you’d want to bring that down to students. Just a thought……..
Kate Olson
http://googtweetblog.edublogs.org
Ability for collaboration and virtual learning. I learnt how to setup a wiki via skype with a teacher from Las Vegas. The power of global collaboration was just a fantastic feature to me. Hope this makes sense1