Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Our First Wiki

This past week, spurred on by a post on NexGen Teachers Ning by Kristian Still, I finally got around to creating the Wiki our students will use to collaborate with our new international partners next year. It doesn't look like much...yet...but it's germinating. This weekend, I chatted with Samuel Yalew, the international relations coordinator at a school in Ethiopia. We met at 9:00am Maryland time on Memorial Day, but neither of us could connect via Skype. We confirmed via email that we were both online, but for some reason Skype showed us both as being offline. So, thinking quickly, I emailed him an invitation to my YackPack and Ta-Da! There we were, chatting as if we were old friends about how we could connect my fifth graders with his students of the same age. He's never heard of a wiki, so I look forward to showing him how powerful this tool can be for collaboration. Now, I've just got to develop some guidelines for introducing the tool to our students, and explaining how to use it safely and responsibly. Has anyone already done this?

WikispacesClick me!
My mission today is asking my fourth graders (who will be in fifth grade next year) to help me design a better logo for our Wiki.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent! I hope that Thailand page is set up for my new students at ISB :)

I've done quite a few internationally collaborative wikis over the last year. We always start with a lesson on internet safety, but I also post the guidelines on every wiki we create. Here's a sample from our seventh grade wiki.

Alecia Berman-Dry said...

Kim--once again thank you for guidance. The teen talk wiki is awesome! I have sent it to all my teacher participants. And yes, there is most certainly a Thailand page!