Special Edition: Yes, Virginia, there is a St. Wiki

As you may be aware of my recent developments, I've been working earnestly in my business and in my education classes, as well as slowly developing my wiki. What I am to do for my technology class, "Enhancing Online Environments" this week, is to make a special post here about Chapter 4 of Will Richardson's book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, 3rd edition.

I'm already sold on the concept, however I failed at promoting it to my students last year in my Intermediate Algebra class. The only way I could sell it to them was make it extra credit, or specifically make a pass/fail assignment to add wiki content. I agree with Richardson that the shift of what's credible is already happening. If you would like to follow him on twitter, he's an avid poster, which requires some time to sift all his comments! His username is willrich45, so if you have an account on Twitter, be sure to add him! His website is also fantastic so I recommend adding that to your RSS feed reader (e.g. http://reader.google.com). But for my master's class, that's the next chapter!! If you wish to follow me, I'm MrSheldahl (wanted MrShel but that's already taken...).

As to the game of communication, interaction, and representation (something I'm re-reading in Chapter 4 of Teaching and Learning at a Distance, Foundations of Distance Education, 4th Edition, I've done just about every form on the taxonomy of distance education for tutoring, from correspondence to two-way desktop (computer) audio/video. Originally I achieved the latter by adding an account on Vyew which has all the tools of collaboration one could need, although I'm warming up more to Adobe Connect after working on an assignment with a colleague who uses it in her daily activities of online teaching.

I'm sure you have more than you wished to know, but now you know the rest of (my college) story. However keep checking this blog, as I may update it with my colleague's blogs also:

http://szuma.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/7/
http://germundson.wordpress.com/

Til I chalk again,

Mr. Shel

Comments

Hope for the next standards....

Though the picture represents a different reason for my mug smile (taken in May 2022), it makes me feel the same way to try to continue to hope for the future of math standards. Currently we are working underneath the 2007 Minnesota Math Standards, and version III of the new standards have been out for comment by the public. Before, there were general ideas what was supposed to be presented to Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Geometry, upper standards (advanced data and statistics), but yet did not account for the College Now or other preparatory math many schools have implemented to be competitive. Here's a case example of hope for improvement. Currently I teach Algebra 1 to the eighth graders in our district. The curriculum we have is very rigorous (that is to say, the book focuses on rational exponents), and gives students little practice with integer exponents to build their confidence. This gap, paired with a low numeracy and low fraction exposure fr...

Incognito

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Times of Transition

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Blackboard Notes

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