Our Web 2.0 Wiki Centric Classroom

The curriculum director and I just completed a nomination of our technology program for the 2006 The Journal Innovators. It's a long shot, but since I had to create it anyway, I thought some of you might want a good synopsis of exactly what we're doing with wikis here at Westwood.

(This is a little less modest than I usually am, but it is nomination for an award.)

What is the Westwood Web 2.0 Wiki-Centric Classroom?

The award winning Westwood School Wiki is the core of Westwood Schools technology program. This wiki coordinates the blogs, podcasts, movies, and other online materials created by students and teacher Vicki Davis. Students post lesson summaries, explore new technologies like mashups and Web 2.0, invent, share, and inspire. This year, the computer science class is writing a wikibook to share with the Westwood community. Instead of banning technology in the classroom, this technology program uses cellphones to shoot video, ipods to download open source books from Librivox, and Google video to upload and share self-produced educational videos. “Engaging students with the technology they love,” has been the strategy of Mrs. Davis who has also worked to help her students with learning disabilities benefit from Internet-enabled differentiated learning. Her students use wikis to study for finals, prepare for major projects, end of semester assessments, and to prep for the SAT. The Westwood wiki was recently profiled in the Boston Globe, named a Wikispace of the Month, and written about in various news articles. Mrs. Davis openly shares her classroom best practices on her Cool Cat Teacher blog, through webcasts, and is contributing to several textbooks about Web 2.0 technologies.

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Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis is a full-time classroom teacher and IT Director in Georgia, USA. She is Mom of three, wife of one, and loves talking about the wise, transformational use of technology for teaching and doing good in the world. She hosts the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast which interviews teachers around the world about remarkable classroom practices to inspire and help teachers. Vicki focuses on what unites us -- a quest for truly remarkable life-changing teaching and learning. The goal of her work is to provide actionable, encouraging, relevant ideas for teachers that are grounded in the truth and shared with love. Vicki has been teaching since 2002 and blogging since 2005. Vicki has spoken around the world to inspire and help teachers reach their students. She is passionate about helping every child find purpose, passion, and meaning in life with a lifelong commitment to the joy and responsibility of learning. If you talk to Vicki for very long, she will encourage you to "Relate to Educate" or "innovate like a turtle" or to be "a remarkable teacher." She loves to talk to teachers who love their students and are trying to do their best. Twitter is her favorite place to share and she loves to make homemade sourdough bread and cinnamon rolls and enjoys running half marathons with her sisters. You can usually find her laughing with her students or digging into a book.

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2 comments

David August 31, 2006 - 10:39 am

Very, very impressive…you deserve to win!

teacher dude August 31, 2006 - 11:28 am

No false modesty now, don’t hide your light under a bushel. Good luck with the award. It would be great if you and the school got the public recognition you all deserve.

Comments are closed.

The Cool Cat Teacher Blog
Vicki Davis writes The Cool Cat Teacher Blog for classroom teachers everywhere
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