Wiki for Educational Technology

Posted by arvind s grover Sat, 10 Dec 2005 22:30:00 GMT

Fred Bartels posted a call today on the ISED listserve, to contribute to a wiki called The Online Independent School Technology Guide.

A Wiki is a web page that anyone can edit. Yes, anyone. So I headed over to the site and posted some information on Course Management Systems and Student Information Systems. Now when you head there, you can add to my info, get rid of it all, edit it, or just read it.

How can this sustain itself? Well, every change ever made is saved. This way, if you post ads all over the site, someone else browing through can turn the clock back to the pre-ads page. It always amazes me how wikis sustain themselves with responsible users cleaning up unconstructive postings. The prime example is Wikipedia (available in 10 languages) of course, the largest encyclopedia in the world, also editable by anyone.

If you are involved in educational technology in any way, please contribute to this beginning knowledgebase. Blogging is one way in which we try to tap collective knowledge; wikis are another very powerful tool for this.

If you haven’t tried a wiki with students yet, get going! Example project: a wiki on the book you are reading – groups of students are responsible for creating chapter summaries, study questions, character reviews, etc. See how much more time they are willing to put it knowing that anyone in the class can see their work at any time.

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Abstinence Only Web-ducation

Posted by arvind s grover Sat, 10 Dec 2005 03:34:00 GMT

The surgeon general says that abstinence education is not enough. Successful sex education must include both abstinence education as well as safe-sex practices. Educating students about using social-networking sites, and more broadly, the Internet requires just the same. While we acknowledge that the safest behavior is to abstain from social-networking communities, we also want those who enter them to do so with the knowledge to do so safely. This is my recreation of the Surgeon General’s report, but made for the online education we are working towards:

Provide access to education about online safety and appropriate use of the Internet that is thorough, wide-ranging, begins early, and continues throughout the lifespan. Such education should: recognize the special place that the online world has in the lives of young people stress the value and benefits of being online anonymously until involved in a community where one feels confident that information is protected and secure * assure awareness of optimal protection from online dangers for those who participate in online communities, while stressing that there are no infallible methods of protection except “abstinence,” and that restricted communities can still leave one’s information exposed

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