I was one of the many who took the opportunity to upgrade recently to FF3 for the Mac. Is anyone else finding blog and wiki dashboards are well and truly screwed up, as well as my Bloglines showing no entries at all? But they look ok in Safari …?

This wiki seems to go for ever and is full of ideas for integrating Web2.0 tools into the classroom.
http://www.teachinghacks.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=2305

I am having a good time finding useful wikis at the moment ….

this comment from Graham Wagner my earlier post from today is worth sharing with everyone if you are one of the people who never checks out the comments - fyi ….

Greg, you can have the ads removed free of charge if you specify that the wiki is for eductaional purposes. There is a sign up page specifically for educators but you can just email Adam (help@wikispaces.com), one of the organisers and have it upgraded. I did the exact same thing with my first wiki (now I’m looking after six!) and wikispaces were excellent in their support of the education community - plus their software is really easy to use.

Thanks Graham for the info ….

For a cool example of a class using a wiki check out http://moturoa.pbwiki.com/. Allanah King the teacher is doing some great things in her room and the school website is worth a look too - she maintains it as well.
Here are their podcasts too- http://www.appleby.school.nz/Appleby/Podcast/Podcast.html

Thanks to Derek Wenmoth for the heads up on this great article about the use/s of wikis in education.
It outlines things about pedagogy, information about different wiki hosts, how-to information and more. This is well worth reading.

I have been having a real look into wikis over the last month or so and are convinced they will be one of THE tools of the future in our classrooms. Wikis, blogs and pod/vid casting I see as the ‘must have’, or really ‘must do’ applications. It is incredible how quickly the kids in our school have taken to podcasting and the quality of the results.
The great thing about both blogging and wikis is they don’t need any special equipment, or even particularly flash computers. Just a browser and decent internet access.
I have even started my own wiki that I am using to organise my thinking around school change, learning and teaching, etc. Feel free to have a look and add your own ideas, resources or anything else. Remembering it is only a week or so ‘old’ and I am still transferring in information from the multitude of sources I have things scattered in so it is still pretty sparse.

Dean Shareski
has the following to say about why we should be using wikis in education:

“So, why all this educational wiki-use? I think the answers are pretty straightforward:

1. Wikis are collaborative, and one of the ideas we want students and teachers to both understand and LIVE is the idea that groups of people can generally come up with better ideas and solutions than people working in isolation.
2. Wikis are iterative, meaning that they improve over time. They are not a single snapshot or a static creation, but rather a dynamic, living creation that can continue to grow as ideas change and evolve over time.
3. Wikis are free. As teachers, we like free stuff. And wikis don???t cost anything to create in our present climate of abundant web 2.0 free tools.
4. Wikis are RSS subscribable, which makes them easier to track and update. More information services in the coming years will embrace RSS for good reason: Pulling information of interest to you is much more preferable than having information PUSHED to you that may or may not be desired.
5. We learn best by experiencing pedagogy and technology: Using wikis permits teachers to take on the role of learners, and directly experience how powerful but yet simple wikis are and can be for instruction??? and especially group work.
6. Wikis are fast to create and update. I???ve been making webpages to accompany my educational technology workshops since the mid-1990s, but I???ve never used anything as fast and easy as a wiki. Yes, using a tool like Dreamweaver I can create a website with many more bells and whistles??? but our focus in education should generally be more on CONTENT and IDEAS rather than bells and whistles. (Vendors and our own students may lose sight of that idea often, but as the teachers in the room we shouldn???t.)
7. Wikis can emphasize the idea that learning is ongoing rather than one-shot, and enable conversations and idea threads to continue long after the staff development session or group project deadline is over.”

agree …. or not ….??

This wiki by Anne Davis has an extensive collection of resources, ideas, examples and software for blogging in the classroom. Worth taking half an hour or so to have a good look through this.
There are lots of good ideas here!
http://adavis.pbwiki.com/