PBWorks (formerly PBwiki)
My classroom will be student-centered, and this collaborative editing website would be a great way for me to engage the students in their learning. I can use the site to create a central area (called a workspace) for students to access information, videos, lesson plans, reading materials, homework assignments, etc. Workspaces have main pages that are basically Wikis, but one of the more useful features is a page that allows you to access material straight from a list of files that have been uploaded. Although a lot of the workspaces I've looked at from other teachers seem to involve mainly teacher-posting and student-viewing, my goal would be to have the students create their own artifacts. I'll have a Wiki for students to access important information, but I would want our PBWorks space to be mainly for the students to use. They could post videos, hold discussions, or even submit assigned projects. I think that having a space that is somewhat "teacher-free" will be very empowering for my students.
The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives (NLVM)
NLVM is a great site that gets students engaged in solving math problems by using interactive Java applets. I'm sure this would be a great resource for math teachers, but as a biology teacher, this type of tool may prove invaluable. I don't want math to be a barrier to learning the science content that we'll be covering, and I could use this site in class or to assign homework. Students in my class will need to understand measurements, graphs, charts, histograms, and data analysis -- all available as fun and interesting activities at NLVM.
References
PBWorks. (2011). Retrieved from http://pbworks.com/content/edu+overview
The National Library of Vitual Manipulatives. (2011). Retrieved from http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/siteinfo.html
Great job this week! You bring up a really important fact that a lot of teachers use wikis mainly to present content... however, they were originally intended as collaborative tools! I think it's great that you will be creating activities that involve your students in the editing/collaborative process and require them to create page and/or edit content on your wiki! The only thing I see missing is citations in the body of your post. You need to have citations AND references.
ReplyDeleteRats! Your right, I didn't have any citations. I'm glad, though, that you're down with my thoughts on the uses of wikis. I'd love to know of any examples that you might know of teachers using wikis in unique and interesting ways. It's one thing for me to think of how I might use them, but I think its really important for teachers everywhere to share ideas with each other.
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