#8 Exploring Wikis

The Wiki Foundation presents many opportunities for student research. There, of course, is the well known Wikipedia. But there is also Wikibooks, Wikiuniversity, Wiktionary, and Wikinews to name a few.

The whole Wiki concept and medium also affords great potential for student contribution and collaboration. When you have a site that multiple users can read, add to and edit it opens up all sorts of opportunities for group projects. For instance one could launch a class journal where all students from a particular class could shape, add to and mold it. It would be a great way for a team of students to write a group research paper.

In Wikipedia I visited several sites of interest to me. I ended up doing my practice edit on a site for Pat Parelli (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Parelli) who is a big name in natural horsemanship. I happen to know a little about his program because my wife utilizes it quite a bit. Some of the criticism was clearly uninformed and so I added a line or two to try to balance out the misinformation. Unfortunately I forgot to sign my edit with my tildes (~~~~). I also went to the discussion page for the same site and added an entry entitled "A Happy Cult Member". I'm attempting to add a link to the Parelli page.

Wiki Intro

This is one of my favorite lessons so far. I'm not sure yet how I might use wikis professionally but I've already got an idea for a personal use. Every summer we do a family "camp-out" and it has gotten fairly large and cumbersome to plan and manage using e-mail. I've been wondering how I might simplify the organizational aspects of this event. The little tutorial video just happened to be about a camping trip. This year I will use a wiki where people can log on and view/add/edit/comment on the information.

Del.icio.us

This is really cool and a fast way to get around from one spot. The potential is huge. I already find myself wanting to put all my bookmarks on this page. Now off to add my Delicious bookmarks to my Pageflakes page.

My Space Account

I set up a My Space account already but now access is blocked from school computers. I can see some advantages for students to have a My Space account but they are few and small compared to what I see as the potential problems. I don't see the need for a student to have so much personal information out there for everyone to see. I know many students who have met people on the site and I think that seems to be its main function. They communicate for awhile and then exchange phone numbers. It has become an all too common way for teenagers to meet what are in essence complete strangers.

Week #3 Thing #4

I've completed the assignment to set up a Page Flakes site and add some RSS feeds. This is pretty cool. I'm considering making it my home page though Skyward as a home page is pretty handy. It was great having Beth and Ryan available after school on Thursdays to help with this assignment. Its like learning any new software or application as it just takes time to figure out how to get around and having Beth and Ryan there to help speeds up the learning curve considerably.

23 Things Revisited

Well, I'm back at it again after letting the 23 things field lie fallow during the winter. I need 11 clock hours by June 30th to keep my certificate current so that is providing an added incentive to get with it and complete the course. I'm appreciating the after school help from Beth and Ryan on this class.