I was in on the conference call last weekend. Once I figured out how to connect (thank you Cheryl) it was easy. I have since tried out Bridgit to have a video chat. It is part of our Smartboard software and seems fairly easy to use. I have a Smartboard mounted on my classroom wall and the students and I love it. I need to play around with it so I can use it more effectively and more often in my room.
I also set up a wiki today for my grade 4 class. It wasn’t too hard to do. Our division’s goto gal (Janis Williams, who is also part of this class) spent the day showing us some neat applications. There were two neat things in the pbwiki: one was the chat link that you can add to any page in your wiki, and the other was the “yackpack.” With the chat function you can chat with everyone else that has the password to your wiki. The yackpack allows you to communicate with others who have access to your wiki using your mic and earphones. I think both would be useful in walking a student through a task on the wiki.
Looking good Nicole.
I’ve used Bridgit and it works very well. Only problem is that it is proprietary software and very expensive to boot. Yugma does the same sort of thing essentially.
I like your Grade 4 wiki. Very cool that you put the Wikis in Plain English clip on the first page.
PBwiki is a great looking tool, appearing more blog like all the time. The differences between between blogs and wikis and web pages is becoming less distinct all the time.
I came across a great scrapbooking wiki called PikiWiki that lets you drag and drop widgits and record pod casts and videocasts right in the application. I put a link to the Pikiwiki in the course wiki (plain old text based wiki)
That wiki looks great, your class must really be enjoying it. I have been using a Smartboard for a while and have never used Bridgit, I will have to take the time and explore it.
Okay Nicole, I followed your lead, and set up a wiki for my class.
www/grade7shsd.pbwiki.com
Lots to fix on it yet though.
Glad to read your blog. I have yet to set up my own wiki.
More goodies to play with! Thanks for the ideas. I will pass along your suggested tools to our teacher who has a SmartBoard. I am thinking I should get him to help me pay for this course!
Great job. I have a wiki but i havenot used it yet. Keep up the good work.
Good work Nicole. You made an interesting wiki at our session on Friday. There are several other sites for wikis, like wikispace, however, pbwiki seems to have all the features and ease of use. We talked about using a wiki to store facts and information. It could be used as the textbook for a class – like wikipedia.
You are lucky to have the use of a smartboard in your classroom. A great instructional addition to the classroom, you do need to spend time creating the lessons.
So much to do… so little time, a very appropriate title: I think I need a walk on the bridge above – very soothing to those in stress.