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Welcome to La Sheonda Martin's Techie Classroom wiki! The goal of this site is to collaborate with one another as educators and colleagues in order to improve technology use and integration to the benefit of our students. I will be posting things here from time to time, but also encourage each of you to do the same. This started as an assignment for my Master's degree, but I am excited about the applications possible with it in the educational realm. We can plan things, share ideas, trouble shoot lessons, etc. Thank you for joining this wiki. I look forward to seeing how we use it in the future!

So far, Catherine Berkeley-Jones (Campus Technology Facilitator), Pam Wanieck (Teacher to Auditory Impaired), Bea Fallis (Special education department chair) and Sara Womack (District speech pathologist) have joined. These are members of our special education department at the Alamo Heights Junior School, as well as the Technology Facilitator. I hope more of our department members will join this wiki so that we can really use this tool to its fullest benefit.

Using this wiki and others, we can save time and reach a greater level of collaboration. We can change the way we regularly communicate in departments, grade levels, etc. So often, there seems to be an outcry about too many meetings that take too much time. While I definitely think we need face to face meeting time, using a tool such as a wiki can allow us to do much preliminary work beforehand and get to the meat of the meeting much more quickly. I would also like to see students able to begin using this type of tool for group projects and problem solving.

Our school/district already has the needed infrastructure and support to allow us to use this tool for many work purposes. There are so many technology tools at our disposal in our district, and this is one way we can expand our use of those.

I am interested to see all of your ideas for ways to use this tool to our advantage and to the advantage of our students. I will post a starting question to all of you here, and if you have other questions that you would like for the group to add, please add those as well.

What are some ways that you all see this tool being used by teachers and/or students?

//Wow!! This really is an amazing tool! I am still new at it and learning as I go, but I believe it would be an amazing asset to our staff and students. Since my area is ELA, I tend to think in that direction. So, I believe our students could possibly write Journal entries (not confidential stuff) and write Essays/Papers for their English classes using the Wiki format. That way, if the information is not confidential, other students in the classroom could learn from each other through collaboration and sharing. The teacher would be a facilitating tool in guiding aspects such as the grammar and format, but the students would be the leaders in the process sharing ideas and content. I also think the Wiki could allow for more staff communication through less meetings on campus if that is what the staff prefers. Teachers can communicate electronicall through a Wiki based format. We could answer questions/concerns, post any questions we may have, share ideas and successes all instantly on-line. I may be thinking big, but when I was doing my master on-line, we blogged the responses to the journal question of the week. It took some getting used it, but I really enjoyed it!! Bea

Additionally, I think it could be beneficial for each subject area to have their own Wiki. Teachers could share lessons and teaching strategies with each other. For example, one English teacher might not be sure how to introduce pronouns. Another teacher might have a great pronoun lesson. She could share the lesson on the Wiki. As Bea noted fewer faculty meetings might be necessary if ideas could instantly be shared in the Wiki community. Personally, I would not mind having a Wiki so that I could communicate with the speech kids. I could remind them of missing assignements and answer their questions without having to remove them from classes. Sara

This is almost like viewing other classrooms without actually being there physically. If teachers post lessons that have been successful then the sharing begins.I am always interested in a __new__ ways to teach an __old__ lesson. The students need these fresh ideas as much as the teachers. What a great way to communicate this information! As for students; kids love to read their peers' writings and it gives them new ideas. On the other hand, a student may feel his ideas are not warranted and when they read someone else's that is similar, it gives them confidence to move forward.

My students are constantly asking questions about their homework. They ask me before school, during lunch, after school, and during class. I am sure there are times at night or over the week-end that they have questions about their homework. Using Wiki would be an opportunity for them to ask these questions while at home and maybe expedite their work. Additionally, other students might be on wiki at the same time and able to answer their questions for them without teacher intervention. Wow, peer sharing!! All in all, I think the Wiki has enormous possibiities!! Pam

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