Wikis: Sites Ideal For Just In Time Learning

Wikis For Professional Development 

The word wiki is a short form of the Hawaiian wiki-wiki, which means quick. Quick and accessible to everyone might arguably be two attributes which have kept the Wiki, a Web site with audience curated content, not only alive, but regularly referenced by the masses. Think of the number of quick look-ups that occur in a single day on Wikipedia. Mike Fisher writes of the immediacy required for educators to stay connected in order to learn and share effectively, identifying what he calls "just in time" learning in his article for teachthought, Connected Professional Development Is Now an Imperative. These connections have evolved to form digital professional learning networks or (DPLNs), systems where fellow educators "get together" to share what they're doing via social media and online tools and applications. Wikis are an ideal online tool for the type of collaborative learning used in DPLNs and wherever professional practice is shared and developed.

Looking closer at a Wiki's use in the educational setting, Foley and Chang (2006) authored a study which examines how Wiki technology can be used to support teacher professional development. Part of their analysis highlights some important inherent features of the Wiki, specifically the high quality of the activities it takes to put a Wiki together: research, synthesis and presentation of the idea for others, and the mutual learning benefits for both Wiki creators and their peers (p.1). Mike Fisher  elaborates on the importance of peer collaboration among teachers, citing P21's 21st Century Skills. Among these, communication and collaboration stand out as desired skills for both educators and learners, and correspondingly are key attributes of Wiki creation.

Curious about a topic? Start a Wiki about it. 

A great way to explore a professional development topic is to start a Wiki about it. Facilitators can frame the PD topic in the form of a Wiki, setting the stage for participants to add their knowledge, research and questions, resulting in the finished product: a personalized, highly relevant and accessible learning tool. 

My Example, Exploring an Existing Technology

Exploring an existing and new-to-some classroom technology, I started mimioteachandlearn using Wikispaces to create a beginning-of-the-year resource to help my colleagues learn more about their new Mimio Projectors and Mimio Notebook software, as well as to identify resources for training, collaboration and trouble shooting.  Content is easy to add, and can include videos, images, polls, and documents.  What additional pages would I like to see on my Wiki? Classroom examples, a Share-What-You-Know page.

Resources

Foley, B., Chang, T. (2006). Wiki as a professional development tool. Paper presented at the      American Education Research Association annual meeting in session "Technology and Teacher Learning." Retrieved from http://www.csun.edu/~bfoley/AERA_Wiki.pdf

Scannable Technology: Immediate, Specific & Targeted

Scannable Technology: Providing the Power of Multimedia References for Immediate Learning Support

A powerful tool for interacting with content, scannable technology allows users to reference information when and where they need it. Quick Response (QR) codes are found everywhere from museum exhibits to detergent bottles. The key to their placement within a learning context is closer to the museum exhibit than the detergent bottle; the goal is for the user to find out more, rather than buy more. Information accessed from a QR code is then only a scan away for students and their families, providing content-related material available in a variety of formats, and targeted to instructional needs.

Image: https://www.unitag.io/qrcode 1

Monica Burns, Author & Speaker, ADE , Founder of Classtechtips.com, recently published an article for Edutopia’s Classroom Technology Blog, 5 Ways to Use Scannable Tech in  the Math Classroom.  Among Burns' suggested strategies, Connect to Tutorials, is one I have tried firsthand in a Second Grade classroom. I chose to create a tutorial about the Partial Sums algorithm, using two digit numbers, to accompany the family newsletter for the unit. This alternate addition strategy is sometimes unfamiliar to Second Grade families, so requires some explanation.

Using DoodlecastPro, a whiteboard presentation tool, I exported an original tutorial I created in .mov format and uploaded it to Google Drive. Then, as pictured below, I used webqur.com to instantly convert my sharing link into a QR Code, ready to layer into the unit's newsletter.

Interface from webqur.com with URL from video tutorial accessed from Google Drive

Student Authoring App

Book Creator: Student Authoring App With Versatile Sharing Capabilities

Book Creator: Seller Red Jumper Limited 

Book Creator is an app for iPad, which is easy for students to use and is versatile for sharing. The team behind Book Creator, @BookCreatorApp, have pinned a tweet announcing their upcoming webinar: Favorite Apps to use with Book Creator. This caught my eye because during my first trial using Book Creator with an entire class, I found it immediately practical to use with iMovie. Right out of the box I believe Book Creator is useful as a fast and easy way to develop instructional materials in any subject and to use in tandem with other tools, like iMovie.

Developing Instructional Materials Using Book Creator

Book Creator is a handy way to put together a fast and simple tutorial, combining photos, text, video and voice (if desired), creating a type of handbook in any subject. I put together a Book Creator handbook for Second Graders, walking through the steps of using the App, so that they could then create their own nonfiction books as a culminating project.

Book Creator books may be exported as PDFs, a handy option for projection in whole class discussions.

Book Creator can also be used to seize teachable moments. During a class discussion about Aurora Borealis, the below video was put together over a lunch break assembling discussion points into a finished shareable video book.

Other options for sharing are possible using a variety of modes including email, print, iTunes, and other Apps, like iBooks.  

Book Creator Used in Tandem With Other Tools

Screenshot from class video, a compilation of students' nonfiction books

Students' finished products, such as books saved as .mov files, can easily become part of a whole class collaborative piece by adding each file into iMovie. By combining the students' books together,  and contextualizing the material with some explanation of the instructional content, the video becomes a seamless collage of student work, a representative artifact for sharing with families on a class page or newsletter.

In-House Professional Development

Peer Collaboration: Teachers Training Teachers

This past school year a colleague and I planned a professional development session for our fellow Teaching Associates on the subjects of gamification and resources for differentiated instruction. Teaching Associates are often charged with supporting small group instruction, ranging from supporting struggling learners to providing enrichment activities for learners ready to move forward in a subject area.  So in this way, the session's content fulfilled some of the areas Vicki Davis, Contributor to Edutopia's Professional Development Blog, identifies as needed for highly effective PD, specifically: Use What You are Teaching, Develop Something You'll Use Right Away, and Empower Peer Collaboration.

Use What You Are Teaching

Gamification was explained at the outset of the PD, through this concise video:

Interactive game board
created with Mimio
Studio software

Student-drawn
avatar used for game
badges

...and modeled using a customized game board created in MimioStudio (an existing technology), which was manipulated by attendees, as they moved through the training stations. Gamelike elements were used throughout the session including custom avatars and opportunities for participants in teams to level-up.

Develop Something You'll Use Right Away

Rating Sheet downloadable here

Resources were selected for the session, based on the belief that they would be highly useful in the TAs' daily work with students. Further, an evaluation sheet was presented, adapted from graphite.org and designed  for faculty to research and select their own apps for use in the classroom.

Empower Peer Collaboration

Google Apps for Education, a suite of tools for the classroom, fosters peer collaboration for both students and teachers through interactive functionality. Google Docs is an ideal way to recap a PD session, complete with notes, resources and links, and photos, all of which can be shared and edited with those in attendance, or with the larger community. Here is the Goole Doc created for the featured TA training session, shared and available for collaboration. Feedback, another vital part of effective PD, can be shared through Google Docs, as well.

References

Davis, V. (2015, April 15). 8 Top Tips for Highly Effective PD. Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/top-tips-highly-effective-pd-vicki-davis 

Teachers: Part of the design for causing learning

On the first day of summer I came across the article, How Good Teachers Decenter Themselves, by the late, Grant Wiggins. We sometimes consider the classroom as the center of learning, and correspondingly, the teacher at its nexus. However, what Wiggins' (2013) work asserts is that learning, not teaching, is at the center of education. And if we, as educators, are to be part of a design which is created to cause learning, one which fosters interesting, worthwhile tasks, and engaging learning experiences, then we must embrace our own role as a learner, as well. Summer, with its affordance of extra time away from the classroom, can be a season where teachers take advantage of broadened perspectives in order to discover and develop the ability to think like a designer, creating an education plan which supports student learning under the optimal conditions, "...making sustained engagement and understanding possible" ( Wiggins, 2013, para. 3).

References

Wiggins, Grant (2013, September). How Good Teachers Decenter Themselves. teachthought. Retrieved from http://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/how-good-teachers-decenter-themselves/