Collaborative Technologies

The first element that I considered when beginning the decision-making of integrating collaborative technology was the collaboration program that I’d use. For my lesson plan, I chose a wiki, but there were many other choices such as Voice Thread, Smile Box, Flickr, etc. I chose a wiki because of the versatility of wikis. With a wiki, I could have a template developed and students can work from what I’ve developed. I also like the aspect that my students can be working on the same wiki at the same time. I reviewed the “Tips for Using Educational Wikis” on page 83 of our text. One of the tips for using educational wikis is to consider access. You’re going to have to decide who will be accessing it and what type is most suited for collaboration. Another concept that I considered was the audience. I know that the audience for my student’s collaboration will be their classmates, their families, and I’ll send out the link to other teachers to view. Limited technology availability was also something I thought about when planning. Since this particular project requires seven groups to create a presentation on a famous American, then had to plan to find seven computers for use! The most available option was reserving the school laptop cart for certain times. The school laptop cart’s schedule isn’t as busy as the school’s computer lab. If I chose to do this project after March then the laptop cart would not be available. Since I have young students, I’d have to plan time before we actually begin working with technology outlining my expectations for posts. We would spend some time discussing what’s appropriate to post, what’s inappropriate to post, and how much to post.

The great thing about wikispaces.com is that it’s a free educational workspace! All the teacher and students need to do is sign up and use it responsibly. Because Internet access can get pricey for a home, I would be sure to never require students to work on the wiki at home. I would always invite family to view what their child has done. I would welcome them into our school before or after school to view the wiki if they had Internet restrictions at home.

Future implementation:
The first project that I want to implement will be a famous Americans project (the one I slightly mentioned above). I currently do this project where I divide my class into about 6-7 groups of 3 and I assign each group a famous American such as Martin Luther King Jr. The group is responsible for researching important information that is outlined in a checklist. After the research is complete, they prepare to present all of the information on a poster. With collaborative technology, I plan to replace posters with a wiki. In an attempt to be more attentive with class time, I would like to collaborate with the computer technology teacher and have the students practice using a wiki during their technology class. When we use the wiki in class, the students would be more familiar with the technology. I also really like VoiceThread. I could see using this to post vocabulary words for the week and students could add sentences using the words. I could also use this at the beginning of the year to help introduce families. I’d really like to also look into doing something like e-pals where my students can communicate with others from a different school or state and even work on a project together!