Thing #18 - Online Productivity Tools

I tried using Google Docs to collaborate with classmates on our final project. It reminds me of a wiki and I wonder what differences there are. I haven't gone further in a wiki then just creating a document so maybe wikis have more capabilities. I do like Google Docs and they are free. I struggled with creating a table because the program does not let you create like Word does - I did find that a barrier. OpenOffice.org was new to me and I'm impressed by the FREE part. I also am always a bit giddy about anything that looks new. From what I saw, there were many templates (I used the calendar) and creating a document was really simple. They seem to use more icons in place of words that are used in Word. I'm not a superstar at any specific word program so I couldn't tell if there were many more significant differences but I did enjoy using it.

Think #16 - Wikis

Sandbox photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons, by Sula - I've been waiting for this THING since we had our first group assignment that used a form of technology and was introduced to using wikis in the class. At first, I only understood a simple way to use them - make lists between friends - which I've done twice now. But after reading so many of the example wikis from Library2play, I've seen how there is a way to use them in the classroom. I really enjoyed the 10th grade literacy circle wiki since I taught 10th grade English for so long. I really connected to the short stories in the wiki, the way the questions were asked and the responses the kids made. I even went on to read about Mr. Morris, his class blog and again was hit over the head with ways to use a blog in an English classroom. I was just so impressed and a bit jealous that I'm not in the classroom right now to start implementing these ideas. I love the list of ideas as well at the end of Thing #16 about how to use the wiki - I never thought of using it for note-taking - so clever. I'd like to see how the boundaries for the students are set up, how they are taught how to use the wiki correctly. I'm sure it takes a bit of education. I also see the wiki being used for a poetry unit. I can't imagine the rules to it right now, but I can imagine the creativity that would come from collaborative poetry. It's just like the game I used to play when I taught 6th graders and gave the first person a sentence and they had to add another sentence, and each person did the same until the story ends with the last person. There really are some clever things that could be done with a wiki - now, to get my self back in a school.