CollegeTweetUp is a grassroots community effort to create a directory of college and university students who use Twitter. Anyone is free to add their @handle to the directory.
To add your name, just send a tweet with the message "college tweetup" and "school name" to @resawu or add it directly on the CollegeTweetUp PBwiki page.
Don't forget! PBwiki is giving away a free premium wiki to educators as part of the 2008 Back to School Challenge. You can also win all sorts of prizes and other cool things. Plus, get a free online professional development course just for signing up!
Setting up a PBwiki is as easy as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! You can learn more about all the ways you can use a wiki in your classroom to enhance and support student learning over on the PBWiki Education page, or the PBwiki Educator Community. PBwiki's are 100% ad-free and totally private.
Educators can also use PBwiki Plugins to add multimedia content with a few clicks, including spreadsheets, calendars, chat rooms, videos, Pixton comics, maps, photo slideshows, and more. If you have other embeddable widgets (like Google Gadgets), you can also insert them in your PBwiki.
To claim your free wiki, simply sign up using the following URL where you will be automatically be guided through the process of creating your free premium educational wiki: http://pbwiki.com/?special=87937&refwiki=ningedu
Once you create your wiki, you will also be eligible to participate in PBwiki's Back-To-School Challenge, which will offer teachers like you a chance to win free school supplies and other prizes by sharing lesson plans, blogging, and offering tips on creating a collaborative classroom or library.
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Did you know that PBwiki hosts complimentary Office Hours each week? Yep, it's true. Join PBwiki every – Wednesday at 1 P.M EST to speak to the staff and get help getting the most out of using a wiki in your classroom.
Don't forget! PBwiki is hosting a Back to School Challenge! From now until October 31st
you can earn a free premium wiki plus great classroom resources. Learn
more at www.backtoschoolchallenge.com
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"PBwiki knows that budgets are going to be tight, and we don’t want a lack of funds to deter educators from using collaborative technologies like wikis with their students.
To this end, PBwiki is giving each teacher or librarian who signs up as part of the program between August 18 and November 31, a free premium wiki (regular price: $250/year).
For example, if you sign up for a free wiki on November 1, you would receive a premium upgrade that lasts until October 31, 2009. Each fall, PBwiki plans to offer additional programs that will let participants retain their premium status free of charge."
You can learn more and sign up for the program by clicking here.
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On Tuesday May 14th (4PM, PDT) the PBWiki team will host a cybersafety webinar for educators on keeping students safe online.
You'll also learn more about PBwiki security settings and hear safety tips from Linda Uhrenholt, an AT&T Education Advocate and leader in cybersafety at CTAP.
I met Linda Uhrenholt last summer at our Yahoo! For Teachers workshop in San Diego and she is an amazing and dynamic teacher. I have no doubt you'll learn a lot and benefit from her expertise.
This event is free, but you need to register here: Cybersafety - PBwiki guide to keeping students safe online.
Related Resources
The guys over at Education Revolution have posted three very good education articles over on their blog. I highly recommend the article Microsoft's Class Action. Give it a read. Good stuff.
Facebook as CMS: I ran across an interesting blog post on the Complex Rhetoric about using Facebook as an alternative to Moodle, Blackboard or other open source CMS platform. What do you think? Is this a good idea? Is this feasible? Join the Teaching & Learning with Facebook Group (on Facebook, requires registration) and share your two or three cents.
I'm a fan of Moodle, but think that for most educators getting it up and running will be too difficult. Facebook, on the other hand, requires just a login and password and they are ready to roll. Not to mention that the students are already using Facebook and it's free.
Wired "How To's": Hosted by Wired, this is a collaborative wiki where anyone can share what they know with other DYI types. Some of the hot topics include: Run Windows on a Mac, back up your Mac or find tiny dinosaur bones. Yes, dinosaur bones. Ah, the wisdom of the masses never ceases to amaze me!
"You Tube" for Scientists: SciVee is a social network/community built "by scientist, for scientists." Members of the science community can upload and share their work as either a podcast or multimedia presentation, connect with other scientists and engage in virtual discussions. As the SciVee corpus grows, there should be some great video that science teachers can integrate into their classroom or Gobble into their Yahoo! For Teachers ePortfolio.
Generation MySpace: "New social technolgies have altered the underlying architectures of social interactions and information distribution." This is an incredible podcast of a presentation given by danah boyd at the 2007 education.au Seminar in Brisbane, Australia.
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You already know that PBwiki is the easiest and best wiki platform out there. But did you know that Atomic Learning has FREE tutorials on PBwiki?
These tutorials will help you learn step-by-step how to create a PBwiki. Hurry, the tutorials are only available for a short time!
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By now you know that I'm an avid fan of using Yackpack in an educational setting. Just a few months ago Yackpack and PBWiki, my favorite wiki platform, joined forces to create a mash-up that allowed you to put audio into your wiki.
That was just the start!
Earlier this week, Yackpack announced a new mash-up with Facebook. But wait. It's even better. Yackpack unleashed two new Facebook apps: Tag! and Walkie Talkie.
You can get all the details over on the Yackpack blog. And be sure to check out the Yackpack groups in Facebook.
Just another great innovative idea from the Yackpack team.
PBWiki, (the super easy to use wiki client) and YackPack (the super easy to use VOIP platform) have joined forces to create the ultimate PB & Yack sandwich: audio for your wiki !
Yep. It's true.
Tomorrow PBWiki will announce a new partnership with YackPack that will allow users to easily embed the YackPack Walkie-Talkie Widget directly into any PBWiki page. And the install of the Walkie-Talkie Widget is über simple (and free!). Go check it out!
As Gen Y continues to push education towards an "always-on" learning style, adding tools like YackPack and PBWiki to your mix of web tools will provide new avenues for students to build unity, get actively engaged, transfer knowledge with peers, and create a technology rich environment where collaboration can take place--anywhere, anytime, 24/7!
Kudos to PBWiki and YackPack for this fantastic collaboration! And get ready for the next bit of magic from the Yack Labs: Tag!
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In the 'sphere: YackPack + PBWiki
Do you use a wiki in your classroom? Has it changed the way you teach? Share your thoughts on this topic or see what your peers have to say about it over on Yahoo! Answers.
Related Links
Don't ask me why, but today I had to find some biographical information about the American cartoon icon Elmer Fudd. And it turns out that Mr. Fudd has his own page on Wikipedia.
Who knew?
I mean, I knew that Wikipedia had a ton of stuff on it, but I never expected to find Elmer Fudd. Okay, I'm off to check W'pedia for Daffy Duck, Hong Kong Phooey, and Pepé Le Pew. Just thought I'd share.
The use of current and emerging social media technology is clearly moving us in the education community closer towards Tim Berners-Lee’s ideal of using the web as "an information space through which people can communicate…by sharing their knowledge in a pool.”
In this world of increased web-based social interaction, meeting the unique needs of Gen Y learning styles is the bottom line. In the 21 Century classroom, the ‘always on,’ student will control the how, what, and when a task is completed.
Gen Y students expect interactive, engaging content and course material that motivates them to learn through challenging pedagogy, conceptual review, and learning style adaptation. This approach offers Gen Y learners flexible, self-paced, customizable content available on-demand (via RSS feeds or Pipes).
Interactive and engaging content motivates students to learn through the course materials and apply them according to their own intrinsic needs and learning goals.
However, educators should be careful not to use social networking for the sake of using social media, rather they should keep in mind how the use of any type of technology element can support student learning--individually and as a collective group.
Social media engages the user in the content and allows them to be included as an active participant as they construct a learning landscape rooted in social interaction, knowledge exchange, and optimum cognitive development with their peers.
The following list illustrates how online learning styles (in this case Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences), and social software technologies can work together to support Gen Y learning styles, and foster community in the online and blended classroom.
Over the next couple weeks, I'll be showing what types of social media support each of the different Multiple Intelligences outlined by Howard Gardner. I'll also list specific social media tools that support each MI type.
MI ATTRIBUTE
SOCIAL MEDIA + VERBAL-LINGUISTIC
SOCIAL MEDIA + VERBAL-LINGUISTIC
Weblog/Self Publishing Tools
Wiki Tools
Podcasting/Audio Tools
Virtual Learning Environments (VLE)
RSS/ATOM Tools
Eduwikipedia is a collaborative wiki project covering the use of Web 2.0 and other technology tools in education. This is a great way to share what you know or learn something new.
The best part about a collaborative project like this is that everyone is invited and encouraged to contribute their knowledge and expertise. So what are you waiting for--join us!
I'm a big fan of PBWiki! It's really easy to use, requires no special tech skills and has a nice integration with Yahoo! Groups. If you are using PBWiki in your classroom, the PBWiki team would love to talk with you! Earlier this week I received this request from the PBWiki Team:
We're working on sharing the benefits of PBwiki, and starting this month, we'll be filming educators talking about PBwiki and using it in the classroom. I'm wondering: Can we film you talking about PBwiki?
If you're an educator in the Bay Area, we'd love to send a small team to film you sharing best practices, your experience with PBwiki, and more.
So if you're interested in participating, drop Ramit an email and he'll take it from there!
Web Resources
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
