Today has been a great day!
I have organised myself for school for Term 3 and had some precious time to work on developing wikis and blogs to get my students started in their online study. I have set up some Wikipedia pages on their texts so we are all ready to fire up in the online world.
I found two great links today – one to help me and students develop wikis – I just love this link:
http://jaxinteractive.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/common-craft-vids-in-plain-english/
I also found this little offering for teachers on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEFKfXiCbLw
Whilst the creator clearly thinks our students are visual, the implication or realisation of ‘our generation’ being a little less of the ‘digital native’ variety seems embedded in the colour scheme and written component of the text.
The film clip suggests that if we could get a little bored reading so much – and it is interesting, even if we are being knocked over the head about our reticence to try anything new – so much more are our students.
For me, anything goes – I can teach verbs, nouns and adjectives at the same time as I teach netiquette. I can teach students how to create internal and external links and how these links create and explore intertextuality. I can teach adverbial phrases that will have students writing the most scintillating content for wikis and blogs. I can easily have students create lists of work they need to complete and develop study guides they share for group projects – and I don’t need a lab – just a whiteboard, a laptop with wireless and a data projector – just use what I have and in the most interesting way possible.
Don’t forget to check out my main Studying English Online Blog for the links to my favourite teaching and learning websites and hotlinks on the web.
I am really looking forward to the term.
Pamela
