Blogs and wikis

Finally got to explore our wiki page on wikis and it was interesting to see examples of student work.  I found the shiny objects presentation interesting, especially that students felt more confident speaking out in class after they had done the mandatory blog posts.  I agree that it would be a good way for the quieter students to have their time to shine and would limit those students that feel the need to dominate the conversations.  I was very impressed by the TALONS site.  I like the idea of the sample lessons from YouTube on the wiki for students to come back to on their own time.  I can think of a math demo that my students liked last year that's going to go on my final project wiki after I finish here.  I did see how blogs can be incorporated more into the classroom, especially in literature.  I have a co-worker that essentially does the same thing with reading journals for literature.  I think I'm going to show him the blogs and see if he's interested in giving his kids that option for reading responses (if they'd rather not do a paper journal).  I hadn't looked at edublogs yet, but I like that they're a more secure way for students to blog.  I'm really excited about my final project wiki, it's the place I wanted to put all of my stuff.  My only regret is that it's not set up like LiveBinder -- I like that tabbed format better.  I think I also have to move my wiki into public wikispaces and out of the ed section, at least for the final project.  I don't think anyone else can access it from where it is now.