If you wiki, I will follow??

I have been curious about developing ways to use wikis in my classroom. But today was the end of one of my units and they had to do a presentation to a group of "investors". I told them that they needed to have the powerpoint to me before class (emailed on Sunday, brought to me yesterday). In one class with 10 groups, I had 4. I gave them every opportunity to get this to me. If I can't get them to turn in this work, how can I expect them to take time outside of class to go online and post?

Wikis

I was reading the chapter in Richardson about Wiki's and like the other chapters, started thinking about my own class. I would really like to try creating a wiki like our ITSopedia. Each chapter, we could create a portion of the wiki to summarize what we have learned. I find that when it comes time for the test, students always want to know what is going to be on it. With a wiki, they could go back and look at everything we have collectively learned and use it to study. Unlike a blog that requires consistent communication, I don't think that students would have to be as diligent about checking the wiki (and therefore the no computer issue would not be such a problem). Everyone could contribute once or twice throughout a chapter (topic, example problem, helpful steps) and then everyone could review it near the end.

Blackboard and Blogging

I got an email the other day from one of my AP's. There is a wiki and blog tool on the FCPS Blackboard site. Has anyone used it? I was just looking at it and I see where I can let the students create entries (by username - id number) but it won't let me let them add comments.

Advocacy and Facebook

I was reading our Advocacy article for this week and came across a section about the use of Facebook. They suggested that if you are advocating for something, you should create a facebook page. This didn't occur to me because as someone who got a facebook when it was first beginning to get popular, I think of it as a socializing tool. But when I thought about it some more, this makes a lot of sense. If you are advocating for something concerning education, the way to get students involved is to use facebook. And, even if you need the adults, so many of them are now using the tool. People check it all the time and so it would be a great way to get your information out.