Online Learning

I'm almost finished with my 4th week of this summer's PB Works Summer Camp for Teachers where I've been able to connect with other educators who are interested in finding ways to use collaborative technologies in their classrooms. Not only has it been great to revise and refine my wiki, but it has been incredibly helpful to learn and connect with other teachers interested in opening up their classrooms using wikis. And the number of teachers participating in this year's online camp is astonishing - over 1,000 elementary, secondary, and higher-education teachers! I've connected with teachers not just through the PB Works page but also through the PB Works Educator Forum and through Twitter using the #pbwcamp hashtag.

In addition to the PB Works course, I also just started a five week summer course with TiGed. The course is part of the Pennsylvania Classrooms for the Future (CFF) Summer Virtual Camps and is open to all CFF coaches and teachers. This will be a bit of a different experience for me. Unlike the PB Works online summer camp, I know next to nothing about TiGed. I've had my PB wiki for over a year so this year's camp was a bit of a review. TiGed is all new to me. But having used multiple different avenues to connect my students who those elsewhere in the world (Facebook, wikis, web pages, Nings, PTPi), I'm looking forward to finding one service that might help me to streamline some of those connections and collaborations. My goal is to find more ways to engage my English students in producing written works and products for authentic audiences. I see wikis and TiGed as ways to encourage those authentic opportunities.

As part of the first class, our TiGed instructor shared Scott McLeod and Karl Fisch's updated "Did You Know." So now, I'm sharing it with you!