LECTURE 2: PB WIKI

PB Wiki- as easy as a Peanut Butter sandwich!

 A wiki is an easy-to-use web page that multiple people can edit.

It’s like a shared whiteboard online. Don’t worry about getting IT support or installing any software. We handle all of that. You just start typing and get an online classroom in about 5 minutes.       

Why use PBwiki?

No HTML experience required. Create a syllabus, share it with your students, and let them write collaborative essays online. Create online Powerpoint-like presentations right from your wiki.      

Who else is using PBwiki? 

We host over 135,000 wikis and thousands of others have used PBwikis for their classrooms, from elementary schools to Stanford and Harvard.    

http://mrlindsay.pbwiki.com  is Mr. Lindsay’s beautiful classroom wiki, where he demos his students’ work with book reviews, poems, stories, and tons of other resources. It’s a wiki run “by the students, for the students.”  

http://cas100b.pbwiki.com  is another excellent educational wiki. You’ll note the project proposals, class notes, and different sections for different classes.  

http://epochewiki.pbwiki.com  is the Penn State English 15 course, which is required for all freshman English students at Penn State.    

PBwiki can help you engage with your audience.

PBwiki provides educators an easy way to post class room material online and gives students the ability to collaborate through the internet.  

 PBwiki is helping educators educate. http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=455b3fa09a282e0d496f .

LECTURE 2: OVERVIEW OF WEB 2.0

Overview of Web 2.0 Web 2.0 is essentially an increasing range of software that supports a variety of technologies for open and collaborative communication, learning and creativity. 

It consits of 

1. A Platform

• This is browser based – e.g. Internet Explorer or Firefox. (Firefox is preferred because it is free and open software in a constant state of development (Web 2.0), whereas Explorer is owned and comes out in a fixed form and then has updates and upgrades on an irregular basis (Web 1.0))
• It operates on open and collaborative principles
• Communications are the key applications

 2. Social Networking

• Personalised and open collaborative knowledge spaces
• Access people as well as knowledge
• Copyright issues exist and have to be dealt with and replaced with a Creative Commons culture
• This is beyond the normal formalities of the classroom and can take place anywhere at any time

 3. Read/Write Web

• People are consurmers of content and services
• People and publishers of content and services
• Such people are called Produsers

 4. What makes Web 2.0

• Blogs
• Wikis
• Social Tagging – bookmarking, Tag Clouds
• Sharing sites
• Podcasts
• Mashups
• Aggregators
• Ubiquitous connectivity

And Kathryn (Lecturer/Tutor) added all these others.   

FLICKR

Flickr, the popular photo hosting service, by all accounts, seems to be the best and easiest way to store, search, sort and share your photos with the world.

 I found using the software quite easy and self-explanatory as the process

was step-by-step and clearly explained throughout.

1. Create an Account (thankfully already have existing Yahoo ID account)
2. Load Pictures (again found this quite easy, only challenge was finding a decent photograph!!!)
3. Label and Describe Pictures (this gives you an opportunity to account for your photography)
4. DONE

 All that’s left to do is to create your profile page and photo layouts – but again, these as easy as following the prompts. Now all I need to do is find some friends and join a group or two, so I can start commenting!

*** So after all the effort I went to, I think it is only appropriate you check out my space on Flickr. http://flickr.com/photos/11117081@N05/ 

So why use Flickr in the classroom?

Use it in the design of lessons that promote and build visual literacy skills in students. A wide variety of applications to learning exist by using Flickr photography, from using single photographs as writing prompts (either creative or interpretive writing) to using multiple image sets in digital storytelling projects. Student users can also contribute to the development of online stories about images, all the while loading their own images.

I would be interested in doing things like:

1. Getting the kids to produce a narrative with five separate shots.
2. Asking the kids to look at different pages on Flickr to get ideas for groups and sets. Ask them to set up sets themselves which the whole class could try to contribute to.
3. Get kids to be photographers on sports day and on trips out etc. They can then comment in captions giving recollections and memories.
4. Get kids to be photographers showing positive images of the school to show everyday life there.
5. Sets of photos showing a ‘typical day’ in their school life. Make comparisons. Get the kids to caption these and to comment on each others.
6. Gather photos of current events across the world or important places that may be relevant to other classroom work.