Category Archives: Wikis

Let’s Collect Writing Project Blogs

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    I like to see what’s happening at other National Writing Project sites, especially during the summer, when the summer institutes are happening all over the country.  Lots of great stuff is occurring in those workshops, and lots of it is trickling out for public consumption via different site blogs.  However, I have never been able to find a complete list of blogs from all of the different sites. 
    So how about let’s create one?  I’ve set up a page on my wiki for listing active NWP local site blogs.  If you have one, or know about one, would you please add it to the list?  I’ll compile an OPML file for easy subscription once the list reaches critical mass.
    Thanks in advance.

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Will Ya, Won’t Ya Wiki?

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    I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it, but the gang at EdTechTalk will be revisiting the Barnraising on Sunday.  They’re taking another shot at creating a solid, one-stop place for how-tos, whys and whatnots of Web 2.0 for the classroom.  I hope that you can and will stop by, if not during the show time, then before or after, and edit where you think necessary, even if only to add a question.
    Of course, I’m learning that there are several good places around the Internet where you can contribute your ideas and tips and information on how best to use Web 2.0 tools in your classroom and community.  Here’s one and here’s another.   (Aaron’s trying to put together a podcasting wiki , too.)   I’m sure you know of several more.  Maybe we should at least try to get links to all of these great resources in one place.  Maybe someone’s already done it. 

    I’m learning that so many people are afraid to edit a wiki, either because they don’t want to muddy someone else’s water or they don’t feel like they have anything to contribute.
    If there’s any lesson that we all need to learn about Web 2.0, it’s that we all need to be muddying each other’s water, and we all have something to contribute.
    So go do some wiki-ing already.

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Barnraising Afterthoughts

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    Just spend a crazy couple of hour writing/drafting/talking/developing the seed of some curricular tools and resources over at the EdTechTalk Barnraising.  I think the core of curriculum is developing, but it will take a significant amount of time and resources over the new few weeks and months to flesh out and create a useful resource for teachers.  We’ve all been creating our own tools and webpages to help us to share knowledge and help other teachers to use Web 2.0 as a classroom device.  It’ll be nice to create a central place to develop and share all of our work. 
    I hope that’s what the EdTechTalk wiki will become.  But it’ll be up to all of us to make sure that what we’ve created becomes more than a collection of neglected wiki pages.
    Here are a couple of things that I’m thinking about as my brain is in super-connective thinking mode.

  • The wiki at EdTechTalk could become one stop shopping for anyone getting started and for those looking to further integrate Web 2.0 in the classroom. 
  • Lots of really smart people have lots of great ideas spread all over the Internet.  How do we centralize that so as to be efficient and not recreating the wheel all of the time?
  • How do we get stakeholders invested in using a central place for all of our resources?  (I don’t mean that everyone should only use one place to write or share, but I do think we could be lots more efficient and effective if we can begin to at least link back to one or two central resources, as well as link ourselves to a few key places.)
  • What are the essential resources/pages/ideas/people that should be linked in to the EdTechTalk wiki?  Who will make the effort to make sure these links get created?
  • What am I overlooking/missing through the haze of my excitement?
  • How does centralization like I’m attempting to describe hurt/harm/conflict with the idea of Small Pieces Loosely Joined?   
  • How can we use the category features of MediaWiki to create a resource that contains multiple ways of organizing and accessing information?
  • Can we pay people to develop some of these ideas further?  Where would the money come from?  Would people want to get paid to develop wiki materials that might and probably will be changed over time?

Can you tell that my mind is racing right now? 

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There are wikis . . .and there are wikis

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    Tadge has been up to some serious good with his wiki project.  You should give it a look the next time you’re planning a training.  For example, this Bloglines tutorial is solid, and there’s plenty more where that came from.  Of course — it is a wiki — which means if you see something that needs fixin’, go ahead and fix it already.  (I’m sure they won’t mind.)
    Check out the wiki — and give thanks to folks like Tadge and his team.

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Better Late than Never

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    I got a really interesting e-mail question from Tadge about three weeks ago.  Then the holidays hit and I got distracted.  (Sorry, Tadge.)  He asked a really good question, one that I’d like to think about some more, but I thought I’d share (with his permission, of course):

I am an Instructional Technology Specialist in Upstate NY and we are
going to be building a Wiki to help our teachers. With the recent
Wikipedia  incident relating to John Seigenthaler and the defaming that
occurred I am wondering about disclaimers and such that should be added
to our prospective wiki. I am curious if you have thought about this at
all. I know I heard a discussion that Bob Sprankle, you, and another
gentleman earlier this week. One comment was about students use of
blogs and conversation that is had within the classroom.

Unfortunately I work for a Board of Cooperative Educational Services,
and we serve over 50,000 students across 10 districts. I am not so
worried about students defacing the wiki, but rather preparing for
others prospective questions about the concern. I know one thing that I
am considering is making the wiki require a password (though I may am
some what against it). I noticed that you don’t have a disclaimer on
your wiki and was wondering if this was purposeful or just not thought
about?
 

I didn’t put one up because I didn’t think to do so.  He further elaborated:


My concern with a wiki, that is completely open like Wikipedia, would
be someone defacing it without my knowledge, or an anonymous IP doing
damage. I know that it comes down to respecting other peoples space and
citizenship, but the Internet has no governing body. Personally the
disclaimer issue has been bouncing around in my head recently. I am
thinking something simple if the wiki has some sort of security
attached to it. Such as requiring a password and login to be created.
The level of security though can inhibit the exchange of ideas, as well
as turn some people away. I am have just been doing some research about
it trying to put a process in place before making it public. I know
that there are skeptics and I want to be able to intrigue the early
adopters and make the fence sitters see the benefits.

At the same time I don’t know everything about technology and I want
others with more knowledge to be able to share it if they would like.
This is why I am thinking of taking some security measures, whether
that is requiring passwords or putting a watch on all pages I haven’t
really figured it out. I appreciate your thoughts and did get another
response about a college who is using wikis and they have actually
locked them down to prevent hacking and defacing. I will let you know
how things are going.

  So — what do y’all think?  I know that I’ve been fighting wiki spam lately — a related issue, but not specifically what Tadge is asking about.  What sorts of disclaimers would you write for a wiki?  Do we need to do so?  Here’s a sandbox — go to work if you’d like.  (Background — Bob Sprankle’s amazing students did a podcast on the John S. story.  It’s a great listen!

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Little Stuff

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    Been a crazy week back after Thanksgiving.  I’ve been busy with grading, writing a couple of assignments, catching up on the wiki relocation, and sharing a cold with my daughter.  A few brief thoughts:

  • I think the wiki‘s back up to speed — perhaps a little better organized than last time, perhaps not.  But I suspect that it will continue to grow.  I hope so, at least.  It’s funny — I know that several teachers have drawn ideas for their blogging policies from the wiki, but I’m still not sure what my final blogging policies will look like.  Heck, that’s why I started the wiki in the first place.  Please, if you’ve found it to be useful, share the resources that you’ve created with the community — we can only get better.
  • One blogging teacher that’s doing some neat stuff with blogging and podcasting is Paul Allison, a tech liaison with the NYCWP in New York City.  His most recent podcast, a jog-cast (he’s jogging while he talks — I’m pretty impressed!) is a reflection on some recent trouble in his school’s blogging program — really relates to some of what we’ve been discussing in regards to safety and liability, etc.  Worth a listen.  (Paul — I like your thinking — but the video version of the jog-cast made me a little bit sick.  Cool experiment, but a bit nauseating.)  Paul’s other recent videocasts took me right into the heart of the NWP Annual Meeting, which was a mice way to make a convention that I otherwise would have missed completely.
  • The Red Cedar Writing Project helped me to catch some of the other happenings of the NCTE/NWP meetings.  They got some interesting conversations started by simply walking up to someone with an iTalk/iPod combo and asking some questions.  Thanks, Red Cedar.  You know, it was the RCWP’s presentation a year ago on digital portfolios at an NWP meeting that was one of the big pushes for me into blogging.  Keep up the good work.
  • It looks like we’ll be getting our laptop lab in time for the next quarter.  That’s good news, because I didn’t have access for my students to begin blogging regularly with them without those computers — and that was getting frustrating.  Look out, y’all — I’ll be pushing blogging in my Science Fiction course this year. 
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MediaWiki

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Wes and Miguel were curious to know how I got going with MediaWiki.  I wish I had a trick or two to share, but I really don’t, other than this website.  The documentation is really thorough and I had little trouble getting going — I just followed the instructions and got it set up in an hour or two.  Pretty smooth, actually.  The biggest problem I had was getting my logo installed — I’m not much for stylesheets and whatnot. 
    I’m slowly making progress on settling into my new wiki home.  Darren‘s helped out by posting his and Miguel’s parent contact vignettes.  If you’ve got a mix/remix/re-remix or whatever of how such a conversation might go, please feel free to tinker away.

   

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Wiki Problem Resolved

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    I’ve just installed MediaWiki on my site.  I thought it would be a pain, but it wasn’t.  I’ll be updating and transferring stuff from the old wiki to this one over the next couple of days.  If you get bored, you’re welcome to help.
    Seems like there might be some new content headed this way.  I hope so.  Darren and Miguel have been remixing an interesting conversation.  Just the sort of stuff the wiki is for.

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