Wiki vs. Ning

With the start of our next class we are leaving our experience with the Ning behind, temporarily, and moving into a course run on a wiki.  Just today I was signing into the wiki and setting up my page.  I also added my blog address to the sidebar, which got me thinking about which type of tool I like the best for these courses.  The strength in my mind with the Ning is the forums and the community building that can be done easily through the individual pages that all link together and connect in a really intuitive way.  You can share your work on the Ning, but I feel that you are somewhat limited in that they are shared through links to other sites or documents.  Some things can be embedded on the Ning's personal pages, but I feel like the individual page is not designed for content. 

The wiki on the other hand seems like it is built for content, and if ever you don't feel there is a space for your work, you just need to create that space.  The wiki also is highly customizable to whatever the needs of the group are.  Templates can be created, group pages, folders, new files that can be shared by all, images are easily accessed.  I think for our group the wiki is actually my preference.  It isn't as flashy as the Ning, but I feel that its functionality is greater. 

For my 7th graders I have put together a Ning for them to use in class.  I don't know that they are yet ready for the building process that goes into a wiki.  I want to get them used to the Ning and see how communities are built and how they operate before opening up the door a little with a wiki.  I will be doing that sometime towards the 3rd or 4th quarter where they will be discussing novels that are set around the Eastern Hemishpere.  In addition to their discussions I want them to post original content.  They will be researching topics of interest that are linked to the novels they have read.

If you have any experience with novels being used in geography or as inspiration for research work or know someone who does I would love to hear from you.

Ningtastic

This week was solely dedicated to the creation and manipulation of my ning. I create the Ning for a simulation that we do in our class, and I was looking for a way for groups to work together and present their product, but also a way for communication to take place between groups in different classes. I'm banking on the Ning to provide this service to my students, and my initial feelings are positive that this will happen.

I did run into some roadblocks working with the Ning, but they were mostly surrounding my not knowing some of the Ning lingo and where certain tools were and how to manipulate them. The only real issue with the Ning was the text boxes that seem to be a casual mix of WYSIWYG and HTML code. It took me a long time to do and I wish the interface was more like the Blogger interface that I'm using right now. I think the product would be better in the end.

Today is the first day my students have checked in on the Ning and signed up and the initial reaction seems to be positive, although we have a fair amount of work before us in getting them to understand appropriate ways to interact with one another.

The last positive is the character I've developed as the Symaster, he is a strikingly handsome man around 60 years old with a Sean Connery resemblance. I think I'll really enjoy playing this character on the Ning and will have to create a personality to match his appearance. Right now the only adjective I can think of to describe the Symaster is salty. I think the Symaster will bring out the best in some of my students as well as frustrate some who have it too easy normally.

Tweet, Tweet, Diigo, Diigo

I'm enjoying Twitter and am impressed by the amount of information the few people I follow have exposed me to. I feel like my eyes have really been opened up and I'm seeing that there is a much larger and powerful community that believes in many of the same things we do and have incorporated, successfully, much of our discussions into their teaching for the benefit of their students. I'm actually sorry that some of these tools and the discussions they reveal were not put into our program at an earlier time.

I feel the same way about social bookmarking. I would have liked and I think it would have been meaningful for at MEIT Cardinal Stritch Diigo group to have been created at the beginning of our cohort. I could only imagine the number of resources that could have been gathered and shared by this point in our journey. I will definitely be using Diigo with my students this year. First for individuals to be able to keep notes on the computer and have Diigo compile them all into one place organized by resource is a huge improvement over the pen and pencil model of the past. The second benefit I hope to gain is real collaboration in the research process and can take place inside and outside of the classroom.

How Can It Help?

I think the RSS item could help the most in the future. What I imagine in the future is my students are going to be producing a lot, and it is going to be found in a variety of different places. RSS should make it easier for me to follow and keep up with what my students are producing. The corollary to all this is that if I'm going to be a guide, I need a closer connection to each student to see where they are going. The RSS feed should help with this in that I could be so closely connected that I may be able to offer recommendations of where to go or who to see about further research before I even get a chance to see or sit down with one of my students.

I am already planning on using Flick'r in my teaching, but this is something that I'm interested in and I thought would be fun to do with my 7th graders. I'm not sure it helps my teaching, other than it helps all my students to connect and know each other better. The RSS feed on the other hand really seems like it could help me with keeping track of all the information that comes in.

Owen in the leaves

Owen in the leaves, originally uploaded by badgergobadger.

Today was a raking day. I had to rake the leaves at my parent's house, then come home and rake my own leaves. Thank goodness for daylight's savings time, I needed all the time I could get. I was at my parent's house at 8:15 and didn't leave until after 11:00. They are out of town, so I was doing the job myself, and with the amount of leaves they had it was like I was actually raking a forest clean of leaves.

Raking at my house was a lot more fun, and easier. My wife was there to help, and as you can see the boys make any job easier.

In a strange way, I enjoy seeing a yard right after raking, still green and entirely devoid of leaves, while all the surrounding yards are still under a blanket of dead foliage. After that it was back to work, school work that is.