About+this+wiki

= = = = =Welcome Chinese Language Teachers! = =欢迎 你们 中国老师！ =

This wiki is both the manual and a toolkit especially designed to teach you about how to use video and wikis in your teaching. Think of this wiki as your sandbox to practice the skills you learn in this workshop. During your workshop you will use this group wiki to post your activities and assignments. You will also use this group wiki to post your comments to journal questions located under discussions. We invite you to use the discussion area to collaborate actively with your workshop colleagues throughout the workshop. You will find that collaboration and feedback to one another about assignments in the discussion is easy. We hope your discussions will enhance your learning of technology and language pedagogy. The only printed handouts you will receive in this workshop are in your registration folder: namely, the agenda, checklist, and a description of your two workshop assignments. However, all handouts and tutorials for the workshop will be available on the group wiki for you to browse, download or print. The group wiki also provides you with one page to upload your workshop activities and assignments.

There will be two workshops, each given on two Saturdays to Chinese Teachers in the Boston Public Schools, and Massachusetts Public Schools who are recipients of StarTalk and Flap Grants. This two day workshop will include: (1) how to use video to teach language and (2) group and individual wikis (3) how to create your video activities using flip cams (4) and how to integrate videos you create and videos you find in teaching assignments. We will loan you flip videos for the duration of the workshop. Also, you will receive a gift of a 4 Gig USB drive recorded with digital content to use for workshop activities and assignments. At the end of each workshop day, we will review your checklists to get feedback on your progress, and you will complete a survey to give us feedback on our teaching.

On the first day of the workshop one you will view examples of how teachers can use video recordings of one group of students' performance as a performance model for another. You will also view video assignments created by other teachers to help you create your own video activity and assignments. The strategy behind day one of the workshop is to give you enough experience with video capture and wikis in order to complete assignment #1 at home and post it to this group wiki.

On the second day, you will apply the skills learned from day one of the workshop to create a private wiki. You will see examples of various wikis and learn some guidelines about using a wiki as a classroom digital portfolio where you can collect the learning artifacts of your students, manage your syllabus, and engage in classroom discussions about learning topics. The strategy behind day two is to begin assignment #2 in class, complete it at home, and post it to this group wiki to share.

Good luck to all! Mary Simone