I love springtime when the new leaves come out, much like this one. I chose this image because it describes the web 2.0 tool I want to talk about. It is called wikispaces and the url is http://www. wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers.
This site began 2 1/2 years ago as a free, private and having unlimited use wiki space for K-12 teachers. As of today, they have given away 332,189 free wiki spaces that they used to charge $50.00 apiece for. How they do this, I haven't a clue however this photo generosity has allowed educators to experiment and excite their students with wikis.
It only takes a minute to sign up and once you do that you are on your way. You can have as many wikis as you want. You can set it up any way you want. You have complete, unlimited use. This is available all over the world.
The site is constantly being improved. They mentioned that soon there will be new features available. They also host online live events. There are tutorials and there is a link to something called sandbox wiki which helps you to get started.
I have signed up for a wiki on this site. I plan to use it as a teaching site to introduce my students to a wiki. My first site will have artists that tried to use perspective in their paintings and drawings. It will be easy to build this site because the images are easier to upload online than getting actual reproductions.
After that I plan to take my students into the computer lab and we will work on a site together.
We will use Flickr and upload images of art they like. We will then discuss them and talk about the Elements of Design and later the Principles of Art and why that is the reason they like the images. This kind of discussion will precede their projects on the Element of Art and the Principles of Design.
I am glad that they are constantly improving this site. I plan to experiment and really try some different things to get my students to try this new medium. As far as I know, and I plan to ask our buildings media person, none of the teachers in my school are using wikis for education. I will report back later how this goes.
photo http://www.fotolia.com
No comments:
Post a Comment