Tools - Week 6

I am later posting this week because we finally (after 18 years!) replaced the carpet in our home. Moving the furniture is tough, but the worst part is moving all the "stuff." I may never go to a store to buy a nonconsumable again - we have too much junk! Anyway, to save money we also ripped up the carpet, which wasn't bad except the staples. I have spent alot of the week moving everything twice. But ... I am excited - new carpet! YAY! We always said - after the dog dies, and the kids move out. Sounds harsh, but it is reality!

Anyway, back to class! I have worked on my project this week, and also explored Wordle, which is fun. I think the students would enjoy this tool. Here is my wordle-
I really liked the different colors and fonts one could use, and it was not time consuming!

To work on my project, I explored the different wikis in more detail. I tried pbworks, wetpaint, and wikispaces. I liked the colors and set-up on wetpaint, but as someone already mentioned, it is too commercial. I couldn't find out how to get rid of the ads, but maybe I missed something? Then I worked with wikispaces. I liked the layout of this wiki better, and the colors were nice. One of the first things I wanted to do was create a table which showed assignments for the classroom and homework for one unit. I worked on this table for a long time (too long!) and it looked great in the edit mode, but each time I published it the table disappeared and I got the text and a bunch of lines (not in table form!) Anyway, I finally gave up to try pbworks. I really didn't want to use pbworks because the layout seems a little confusing to me. During this course I have sometimes had trouble locating the page I needed. I always figured it out, but I knew that my students would likely use this as an excuse unless I could make it more user friendly. Actually, they probably would have no trouble, but it bothered me!! My problem is that in the navigator box shown below I couldn't always find the week I needed. Later I realized I had to click on the correct folder, but I didn't want my students to spend time figuring it out.


After I played with pbworks a little more, I realized that I could edit the order of the folders in the navigator by placing numbers beside them. If there were no numbers, the folders appear in ABC order.


Shown above is a picture of the navigator for my wiki. I aso found I could star the main folders, which I think will help the students. Then I worked on editing the sidebar, which also gave me a little more organization.

Using the sidebar gives the opportunity to show the outline of the wiki so that any page can be accessed at any time (I think!)

I was very slow with these ideas, so there may be an easier way, but I was excited to have worked out the issues I had with pbworks.

I also downloaded Jing and explored it. I really like this tool! I don't know how much I will use it in my classroom right now, but it is great to know that I am able to use it and have it set up to embed images.

My project is underway, but I would like to addsome more information and a few more pages before anyone else previews it. I have emailed my principal to tell him of my plans, and he replied that he is excited to see what I'd like to do . A good week's work!