Thing #16 - Wikis

On the ALA conference wiki site, I checked out Lichen Rancourt's presentation about Web 2.SO?: Why it matters to libraries. The point that she makes about librarians needing to be aware of and use 2.0 tools could just as easily, to an extent, anyway, apply to educators. Her slide show was well done.

AASL Conference 2007 interactive presentation by David Loertscher with presentation notes and audience responses. I'm looking over the presentation. I came across a reference to MOODLE. I want to explore this more (sometime!) I like his question in Table #5:

what would happen if... the IL standards were more well known by teachers. .... [and librarians had] consistent planning time with teachers

Loertscher replies on his Teaching & Learning page:

what would happen if... the IL standards were more well known by teachers? ed note: We cannot hope to collaborate with every teacher on every unit of instruction taught in the shcool. If all students are to become better users of informaiton and ideas, the teachers must be information literate themselves and then incorcoporate those ideas into their own teaching. That is one gift of true collaboration; the teacher learns what we teach and we learn about what they teach. Together, we are better teachers and learners ourselves. consistent planning time with teachers. ed note: One of the reasons I like the concept of professional learning communities is that smart principals can easily include the librarian and other specialists in consistent planning times. What that happens, the door swings wide open for you to make a difference.

Table #9: Comic Life ($ 500 per district). Example: Research Vietnam - Then a
fiction story into a comic book on "A Day in the Life of a Soldier"
.........This is something that could be applied to my 5th grade teachers who research the Revolutionary war. This would be cool!

What an incredible resource of ideas!

Also on Loertscher's weblink in the Reading section:

The “reading” focus group summarized our conversation with these paradigm
shifts: From → To
promoting reading → modeling reading
collecting
facts → deep understanding
static → active
control → synergy
literacy → multiple literacies
individual → team
gatekeeper →
engaged
Submitted by Judi Moreillon

Lortscher's thoughts on Teaching & Learning are awesome & worth reading & re-reading! There are LOTS of treasures there! One comment he makes is that: Attention is the currency of this century. If one method does not work, try another.

I posted a brief message at the SBISD Sandbox.

Using Wikis to Create Online Communities had some great ideas about ways to incorporate using Wikis. My husband is in a group that is working on a large project for our church. One idea that I had was to share the concept of wikis with him so that he and the various groups he functions on can work more efficiently.

In my reality, I think wikis would be a great place for student's to collaboratively work on a project.

StudentBlogWikiTools: Free Sources (that I found on VWB's blogroll) is a "one one stop shop" for all sorts of cool tools. I've delicious'd this!

In thinking about Loertscher's comment about planning with teachers, the reality is that I don't (right now) have a set time for plannning with teachers. Thinking about this, a wiki may be able to help this communication process!