NCETC Wikis with David Warlick
Wow! Where do I begin? David’s session today was fabulous. I learned so much. This is how all the sessions should be conducted. Introduce the concept, let us play, teach us something else, let us play, etc …. What a great concept.
I went into the session worried that I wouldn’t know enough to “hold my own” with the other teachers. But, I realized that everyone seems to be in my same boat. We’re all learning as we go. How comforting. One of the highlights from the session was Skypeing (new web2.0 word) coolcatteacher herself. WOW! She’s is definitely someone to aspire to emulate. If you haven’t checked out her blog and wiki – do so! It’s fabulous. It was great to be able to see someone in the virtual flesh that you see so often on the web.
I went to my hotel room afterwards hoping to continue working on my wiki, but alas, I couldn’t get a wireless signal. So, the wiki will have to wait.
I have a full schedule for tomorrow. It will be tiring, but I am looking forward to all the sessions. Spent a little bit of time in the exhibit hall tonight before dinner. It was interesting. For some reason, I thought it would be different from the math and science conferences I have attended, but it was very similar. The toys are just a bit more expensive 
We had a great discussion tonight at dinner. I enjoy getting with other people and hearing their opinions. This web2.0 is so new to so many of us that we all are sharing as we go. How wonderful! There are 5 of us from my district attending the conference. We plan on meeting sometime in December to share our resources. We never seem to have enough time to just “talk”. Being a teacher for so many years, I know that that’s when you get the best ideas. Free flow of communication. Ahhhh, just like web2.0.
Kim and I did decide in David’s session that instead of making a webpage for the ITF’s resources, we’re going to do a wiki. Hopefully, the teachers will use and contribute to the site. I just need to convince one or two that this is a good idea and the other teachers will join in; hopefully.
I realized something today that was a breakthrough, if you will. I was a math and music person all through school. Hated to write and hated English (when I was in school it was not called Language Arts – I went to school a very long time ago), but I did well. I don’t know if it was out of shear determination or fear of my parents (B’s were not acceptable). Now, with my blog, I’m beginning to enjoy writing. I don’t know if anyone ever reads this thing, but I do enjoy writing it. Lightning strike me, I can’t believe I just wrote that I enjoy writing! But, it’s true. Maybe if blogs had been around when I was growing up, I might have been a language arts teacher instead of a math teacher. Nah – don’t see that happening. This must be what the kids feel, too. What an accomplishment for our education system!
If someone is reading this, leave me a quick comment or two. It’d be nice to know if I have an audience other than my mom and dad.
Until next time ~ Danita
November 29th, 2006 at 12:12 am
I’m reading! I feel the same way about writing. I have really enjoyed writing on my blog, and I never really felt that way before. I think the knowledge that there is an audience makes it more exciting for me.
How exciting to see David Warlick! It sounds like a great conference. I really like using wiki’s for lots of things. Good luck with yours!
November 29th, 2006 at 3:59 am
[...] Random Ramblings » NCETC Wikis [...]
November 29th, 2006 at 4:09 am
Danita,
Thanks for the feedback on our session on wikis. As you know, it was the first time I taught that and I was very satisfied with the response.
Like you, I was more of a math/music/science guy (though I never really “enjoyed” math either). I actually believe that I was taught to be a poor writer. I deeply enjoyed creative writing, but mostly it reports and they were all so formulaic (not nearly so much as today), that it never really rang true to me as a useful skill.
I wrote more on this in one of my morning blogs:
http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/2006/11/29/learner-as-communicator/
Hope to see you at another session of mine today or tomorrow.
– dave –
November 29th, 2006 at 4:52 am
[...] I did a workshop on wikis today, and, by all accounts, it was a huge success. Having never taught it before, I really did not know how well educators would take to it, but it seemed that everyone (teachers, administrators, college faculty) found something in wikis that they could do — that helped them do their jobs. We used Wikispaces, learned how to create hyperlinks, format text, talked about security, learned to embed images, videos from YouTube and Google Video, and even how to aggregate blog entries, news, and del.icio.us web links into their wiki pages. It was very gratifying, and I’ll do that one again (doing two wiki breakout sessions here at NCETC). [...]
November 29th, 2006 at 10:05 am
I am reading your posts. Thanks for all your work and enthusiasm. If there are 5 of you attending this conference you have plenty to start from. Coordinate projects between your schools and watch the synergy take off. The 2.0 community is a wonderful family to be part of.
Continued success. Set high goals
Chris
makeitintersting.blogspot.com
November 29th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
Thank you for your compliments! I am so humbled. I am just a teacher who loves my students and wants to improve myself, thank you for the compliments. David Warlick is my inspiration and has done a lot to get me started, he is a great person to learn from because he has been in the classroom and understands the realities we face there. I think that most conference presenters couldn’t hold their own in a classroom – he did and he is so humble (and funny.) I’m jealous because David didn’t come to GAETC this year.
Good luck and let me know how I can help!
December 6th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
Danita,
Lucky for me your blog was featured on PluggedIn! I was checking out this resource, along with a host of others after I attended the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference in NH last week. Even though I work with technology every day as a Computer Specialist at a Massachusetts elementary school, seeing how ths technology is being used in classrooms across the country was an eye-opening experience for me.
Thanks for your random Ramblings!
Julie