Blogs and Wikis for Professional Development

From Usefulwiki

Using Blogs and Wikis for Professional Development.

You have probably heard of blogs and you may even have head of wikis. I suspect most people have heard of Wikipedia. These are all part of what has become known as web 2.0

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What IS web 2.0?

Web 1.0 was basically one-way. You went to a site, read it, maybe bought or learnt something, added it to your favourites on your own computer.

Web 2.0 is two-way and collaborative, and much of your interaction occurs on the web(you don't have to "download" anything). Blogs, Wikis, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and many other sites fit this category. It's sometimes called 'the read-write web'.

Mostly this means that instead of just reading you can:

make your own content (quickly and easily make new pages,add your own photos, make lists of your favourite sites)
add comments, get involved in a conversation about whatever it is,(blog post, photo, bookmark)
tag stuff (add your own keyword to the page)
share stuff (find other people who share your interests and interact with them, share your bookmarks so they don't just live on your computer)

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What is a Blog?

A blog is a web log, a kind of online diary but it gets more interesting than that when you have visitors who leave comments on your blog. Then there are ways to read news from lots of people's blogs all in one go, without having to check them all individually.

It's an important development which you need to be aware of, and believe it or not, it's fun. Whether you are someone who doesn't know what a blog is, someone who has heard of blogs but thinks they are for other people, or someone who already reads a few blogs, there is stuff for everyone to learn, to experiment with and to exchange ideas about.

Blogging isn't difficult. If you can use Word you can write a blog. You can create and update your new blog by just typing into a form in your web browser eg Internet Explorer. The idea is to make it as easy as possible so that you can get into the habit of writing regular articles, whenever the fancy takes you, wherever you can have access to the internet. Most people who blog are writers not techies.

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How do I find things about my topic?

Building a personal learning network:

Social bookmarking

Twitter

Blog rolls/Google reader/sharing

Insert:

http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=ah7bhtcgt4sp_195csqn4bcg

Explain about google reader - show them mine? Think better - Find the person on twitter who was writing an intro to google reader yesterday! Use this example!!

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How do you find time to read all this stuff?

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Why Should Teachers Blog?

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My blogs

Brief explanation of Classroom Displays blog

Brief tour of my blogs:

Classroom Displays

Acting to Improve

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Questions from floor about blogging.

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What do teachers need to support their learning?

I blog and use the other web2.0 tools because it actually makes life easier not harder. It's not formal CPD, it's informal. It allows me to focus on exactly what I need to know, not what someone else thinks I might. It's like those courses you go on and when you come back you realise the most important thing was networking with new people who do your job. Except my network is global and it shares its teaching materials!

Support, frequent, ongoing, online and face to face support from people who do ‘get it’,
Time to pay attention to their own learning,
Meaningful solutions to their day to day issues (like “What shall I do with that (*) wall this time?”)
and ideally an element of playfulness to sugar the pill and stop them scrunching up their faces in agony.

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