Our Web 2.0 Wiki Centric Classroom

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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.

Tags: wiki, podcast, education, teaching, coolcatteacher, Vicki Davis, Westwood Schools, Westwod Wiki, wikibook

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Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis has been an educator and IT director in Georgia since 2002. Today, she also works as an instructional technology coach, staying side-by-side with active teachers and students so her work stays grounded in real classrooms.

She's a 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 has blogged at the Cool Cat Teacher Blog since 2005 and hosts the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk (radio, public access TV, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms), interviewing remarkable educators around the world. 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, grounded in truth and shared with love.

If you talk to Vicki for long, she'll encourage you to "Relate to Educate," to "innovate like a turtle," or to be "a remarkable teacher." She loves homemade sourdough bread and cinnamon rolls and runs half marathons with her sisters. You can usually find her laughing with her students or digging into a book.

Thank you for reading, sharing, and telling your friends about the work we do here! - Vicki

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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.