The first group at the Summer Institute is talking about ways to do online collaboration. Has anyone really tried this in the wild? Our tech department at work has used a wiki with great success for online collaboration. (We’re using MediaWiki, the engine behind Wikipedia.) It’s not real-time, but we’ve found that relatively few collaborations really require synchronous communication.
Tag Archives: wikipedia
Buzzword alert: AJAX
It’s impossible to keep up with the acronyms that appear on the Web these days. One of the latest to show up on my radar screen is AJAX which stands for “Asynchronous Javascript and XML.” In a nutshell, AJAX describes a technique for building web applications that don’t necessarily act like web applications. If you’ve used the keyboard navigation in Gmail or the smooth map scrolling at Google Maps then you know what I’m talking about. Instead of continually loading entire Web pages like traditional Web-based applications (e.g., most online stores), AJAX apps usually fetch information in the background and respond more like desktop applications. If you’d like more geeky details, you might find the Wikipedia entry interesting.
So the next time a software vendor comes calling and advertises his application’s AJAX-compliance, you can be suitably unimpressed by his buzzword-compliance.
Update: Kottke’s got a post about how he’s using AJAX on the main page of his blog. More details about the technology if you’re interested.
Comics for learning
The success of Frank Miller’s Sin City in theaters has brought the comic book genre into the spotlight. As a former Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil fan I was quite intrigued when I heard about Comic Life on the MAKE:DIYcast podcast this morning. Comic Life is a Mac OS X application that takes photos from iPhoto and lets you drag and drop your way to a comic book. Check out the Comic Life gallery for some examples.
This software has such amazing potential with kids. Can you imagine how geared up students would be to use this? Heck, I had a blast creating my first comic. (I created it very quickly. Please forgive the rampant silliness.) Who wouldn’t be motivated to do a writing project this way? Given that iPhoto can be used to manage any kind of image and not just digital photos, my brain is racing to think of uses for this software. Here’s the first off-the-top-of-the-head list:
- Science students create lab reports combining digital photos of an experiment with hand drawn or computer generated graphics explaining what’s going on. They could include their data analysis right in the “comic.”
- History students find some period costumes and re-enact a historically significant event.
- Students use Comic Life to create a storyboard of a video project including some sample dialog and key visual elements.
- Combine digital images and hand-drawn graphics in the same panel to send characters back in time or create giant ladybugs that can crush cars.
- Students create a comic book that explains their family history and combines old and new photos.
This software would be a great addition to the student laptops in our one-to-one computing project. The cost is very reasonable (especially for site licenses) and the potential is huge. This is easily the most fun I’ve had with a piece of software in a long time. If you’re reading this and think of a good project idea, post it in the comments. Let’s see if we can get a good list going.
Hacking Google Maps
Saw this today on Jon Udell’s weblog. It seems that with enough knowledge of javascripting, Flash, and access to a handheld GPS unit, it’s possible to create semi-animated walking or driving tour using the new Google Maps service. Jon, inspired by Matt’s work, has created a five-minute guided tour of an area near his home complete with voiceover narration, zooming in and out of the map, still images, and short video clips. Amazing!
My first thought is that this could be a great addition to the “soundseeing tours” that have become pretty popular in the podcasting world. I haven’t investigated far enough to know how complicated it is to make one of these Google Maps animations, but wouldn’t it be a great multimedia project idea for students? The project ideas are endless:
- Tours of the kids’ hometown with local landmarks and points of local history highlighted
- Virtual tours of places the kids have visited or would like to visit
- Recreations of historic trips
Jon’s blog appears to be thoroughly slashdotted at the moment. I’ll post an update as soon as I can get back to it.
Assessing wikis
We’re starting to get some traction with wikis in our district. One of our social studies teachers is using Moodle’s wiki module in her 7th grade geography class for a unit on Asia. She created a skeleton outline in the wiki, providing a bulleted list of topics like landforms, climate, history, food, climate, etc. Then the students jumped in and started adding images, additional information, and hyperlinks.
We talked yesterday about assessing student work in the wiki. It’s possible, of course, to look at the history of each wiki page to see who contributed what content. You can also imagine how cumbersome it would be for a teacher to go back through the history of each page looking at diffs and scoring each student’s work. Self-assessment is an obvious option, but I’m wondering how others have approached this issue. How are you assessing wikis? I’m all ears.
Wiki shopping guide
I posted last July about the canonical list of wiki engines that is available. The choices are so vast that choosing one can make your head spin. Here’s a little more help for you if you’re shopping for a wiki. The Wiki Choicetree, found at the original wiki site, goes one step further and breaks the list down according to the features of each wiki. This list should help clear up the options a bit.
I’m using MediaWiki (amazing features) and Instiki (dead simple to use) and am liking both of them. You won’t go wrong with either one.
Google may come to Wikipedia’s aid
Just saw this on Slashot. Google is interested in hosting some of the Wikimedia projects. This will be a great boon for Wikipedia, the largest wiki in the world and a frequent victim of its own success. I talk to educators often about wikis and have been frustrated many times by the obvious overloading of the Wikipedia servers. What a great way for Google to give back to the community.
A primer on FOSS in education
The International Open Source Network (IOSN) has just released a primer on Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) in education. The document highlights uses of open source software in the infrastructure, administration, and classroom work of schools, focusing on a number of high-profile projects such as the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP), OpenOffice.org, Koha, Moodle, MIT’s OpenCourseWare, and Wikipedia. Low cost isn’t the only reason to move toward open source software, and this document does an excellent job of providing important information to school leaders who want to learn more.