Comments on: Where You Going?

By: Mr W

Mr W — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 23:25:04 +0000

Hi Chris… don’t know if you’re still reading this, but I’ve found your missing posts. Akismet had decided they were Spam… it also decided one of MY comments was spam too… the cheek!

By: Liz O'Neill

Liz O'Neill — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:01:30 +0000

Thanks neil, I’ve set up a free wiki, and will now do as directed

By: chris

chris — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:27:38 +0000

Left the link and it’s vanished again. But it’s obvious – just add the http + www bits!

By: chris

chris — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 17:26:36 +0000

http://www.quicktopic.com

- Document review allows for co-operation and comment on, say, a piece of written work.
(DW wrote the url on my Stormhoek leaflet!)

By: Mr W

Mr W — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:43:21 +0000

I don’t know the Weinberger reference? Do you have a link? (I’ll try google as well)

By: chris

chris — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 10:48:34 +0000

Neil – it made every sense. I knew for the last 15 years of my school life that I had to teach “how” rather than “what” – something that I think English teachers often felt was confined to teaching Maths. You simply have a better range of tools with which to do this – I used a great deal of oral discussion and my classes tended to do their actual written work away from the classroom.
Another thing I mentioned in my vanished post was Quick Topic/Document Review, which Dave Weinberger (!) recommended to me. I put a link in – maybe that’s what lost it for me! Do you use it at all?

By: Mr W

Mr W — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 08:19:52 +0000

Liz – Full marks for checking with the Management… I really must do the same myself one of these days! (I often find that it’s better not to tell the people that could stop you what you’re doing)

As to wikis, if you follow the link on the side of my front page (or click HERE) you can be set up with an advert free wikispace in minutes. After that, I’d suggest that you just play about with it! Apart from the different code for italics et al, it is fairly self-evident. If you need help, just drop me a line!

Chris – No worries! I’m getting ready to speak to LTS about content-filtering/blocking anyway, and am so nervous that I’d probably not be able to reply sensibly anyway…

Did what I said make any sense to you?

By: chris

chris — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 22:53:51 +0000

I sent a long(ish) and thoughtful response to this ost, but it seems to have vanished into the ether and now I don’t feel thoughtful any more. Sorry!

By: chris

chris — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 10:47:33 +0000

Thank you, Neil – this is great. It would have been fun to be in the same department …;-)
You’re teaching them “how” rather than simply “what”, and I’ve always (well, for the past 15 years) thought that this was the best thing I could ever do. I had to do it with discussion and direct interaction with words on the page, but there was little actual writing done in the classroom as I tended to feel it should be done elsewhere when I wasn’t around (and the rest of the pupils weren’t around) to bounce things off. Presumably the wiki allows the bouncing to go on at home/in the resource centre/whatever. And so exams should hold few terrors *if* you’ve spent time on the texts that will fulfil the demands of the questions set – because the pupils won’t need to remember the stuff to regurgitate it; they should have the ability to work it out as they go along. Just texts to recall and understand!

Analogy: I am hopeless at remembering music or words – anything from hymns to Tallis’ 40-part “spem in alium”. But it doesn’t matter because I’m a good sight-reader – so I just read what’s in front of me and concentrate on interpretation and sound.

On a slightly different tack: do you ever use QuickTopic – in particular the Document Review facility? Dave Weinberger suggested I try it when we met at Teach Meet. (Didn’t know it was him at the time, mind ….)

By: Liz O'Neill

Liz O'Neill — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 10:45:32 +0000

Neil,

Your comments really resonate with me, er… man. You know what I mean.

I’m just starting out on trying to use blogs etc with classes, and as you say, one of the main benefits has been to me as a teacher. I’m thinking a lot about what I’m actually trying to do.

Last week I started a website with my AH English class. We intended to start a blog -but were having problems accessing any blog sites. One of the pupils suggested he set up a website for us -with a forum where dissertations and critical essays could be posted for others to read and comment.
We discussed what we would use it for in class. We all like the idea of being able to access it outside of school. One or two students brought up their concerns about not knowing how to do ‘this and that’. Others promised to help them with it.
The class were very worried about people lifting/copying/trashing their dissertations, so want the thing to be password protected.

(So, they WERE listening when I was rambling on about plagiarism -must have overdone it

I checked with management if it was alright to go ahead. They were happy, with the provision that we don’t exchange personal email addresses.

It was set up that night by the pupil. I was writing a little post about being responsible on the forum, not putting on inappropriate links etc -when I noticed that said pupil has already addressed this issue in a very direct, effective, sensible way.

The thing is, I realised as we went along, that the pupils were getting to show off their knowledge, work out solutions to problems and co-operate with each other.

To me, this is where we want to go with education.

Now, how do I set up a class wiki?