Collaborative Learning Tools and Practices

Steven Parker

TAFE

Teaching & Learning Initiatives

What we’ll talk about…

• Continual Change and Innovation• Web 2.0 Networking People to Share Learning• Engaging Students – Remaining Relevant• Managing Information Flow within Organisation• Blogs - Personal Publishing Tools - Examples• Wiki’s – Collaborative Publishing Tools -

Examples

Continual Change

Alvin Toffler - http://tinyurl.com/35bebu

Networking People, Sharing pedagogy and Teaching Tools – Group Learning Practices

http://sparker.wikispaces.com/Group+Learning

Lets Share IT – Start with People first – then look at Technology

WEB 2.0

Why Blog? - Personal Publishing to the Network

…Make it personally meaningful…• 'teachers have known for a long time

that students develop better communication skills when they are authentically communicating. A number of educators are helping their students developing their writing skills by having them publish their work as blogs, and then invite comments from people in the outside.'http://classblogmeister.com/

• Management that enables people to adopt new technologies and practices rather than controls

• Systemisation of learning and innovation, Blogs and wikis are key tools

The Benefits of blogs in education

• Personalised online communication tool to suit a variety of learning styles

• Potentially inspiring, engaging learning and assessment tool

• Anytime access to and publishing of media, text, video, photos

• Anytime, anywhere access to view and record journal entries for reflection and assessment

Blog Examples in Education

• One of the great aspects of blogging is being able to comment on your students work for example: 'The Gong Media Student Blog' ( http://tinyurl.com/yqwva8 ) and colleagues work 'Learning without borders blog' ( http://tinyurl.com/yrpfrd )

• http://networklearning.blogspot.com - my personal professional using http://Blogger.com .

Publishing media – Video, Podcast http://sparker.blip.tv Trades blog, used by Metal Fabrications teachers for

professional development and pulling together resources.http://metaledblog.blogspot.com/

Wiki’s – Collaborative Publishing Tools

Definition: What is a Wiki?• A wiki is a website that allows visitors to add, remove, and edit

content.] A collaborative technology for organizing information on Web sites, the first wiki (WikiWikiWeb) was developed by Ward Cunningham in the mid-1990s. Wikis allow for linking among any number of pages, to add, change or update content. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring.

• Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, is one of the best known wikis.• (From: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki.)• Wikispaces.com provides a free, online service to teachers and

students which allows them to work together using a Wiki to create, edit, collate and present information.

Wiki Examples Collaborative Class wiki, example of a well developed

wiki check out what the kids at FlatPlanet have created at http://flatplanet.wikispaces.com/. It may give you some ideas.

Tourism and Hospitality Professional Pratice wiki http://thed.wikispaces.com/

Ilawarra Institute eLearning research wiki http://tafeonline07.wikispaces.com/

Personal professional portfolio wiki http://sparker.wikispaces.com , http://jokay.wikispaces.com

RSS – Sharing ideas and learning

http://sparker.wikispaces.com/Intro+to+RSS

Blogger.com and Wikispaces.com Workshops

(11-12pm or 12-1pm)Participants will work through activity sheets to:

• Explore the possible use of blogs in education (30 mins)• Create your own blog site (Personal learning environment)• Publish blog entries• Publish engaging multimedia, video, animations etc, in your blog• Gain an understanding of Blogs and how they can be used for

knowledge sharing and collaboration.

• Explore the possible use of wikis in education (30 mins)• Learn how to edit a Wikipage using Wikispaces.• Learn how to setup a Wikispace for personal or educational use.• Explore strategies for using Wikis with learners.

Thanks for listening!

• Email: sparkered@gmail.com

• Blog: www.networklearning.blogspot.com

• Wiki: www.sparker.wikikspaces.com

• Video blog: www.sparker.blip.tv