Wiki Project Management

There is a great new feature on Wikispaces that enables a teacher to have better control over timing of an assignment using Wiki's. This new project management system allows the teachers to automatically allow specific groups of students access to a Wiki project without having to turn on the Wiki manually. It can be done from the outset when you are creating the project. What a relief for a teacher not to have to worry about going back in to make it go live! Thank you Wikispaces.

Check out the following link for a quick tutorial:
http://blog.wikispaces.com/2012/03/a-new-way-to-schedule-events-for-your-projects.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wikispaces+%28Wikispaces+Blog%29

Not losing ourselves to a world beyond our own

I think that there is great wisdom in our tradition in placing most emphasis on the here and now and not focusing all that much of the hereafter. God placed us in this world so that we should watch over it and take care of it and serve God through it. I feel it a shame that we feel the need to send out students into virtual worlds in order to peak their interest or broaden their horizons. Why can't we have our students engage in the world that is all around them rather than sinking into an alternate world like Second Life. I stop and wonder as to whether SL is yet another human attempt at creating the Tower of Bavel. Tyring to become creators and controlers of our environment rather than having to live in the world that God has given us as it is where we are not in control. By losing ourselves to SL we can escape our own realities. Why do we need to visit virtual Rome? Why not either visit the real Rome or else spend more time focusing on actually paying a bit of attention to the towns and cities that are right around us. Instead of learning about poverty in Africa through SL, why not have our students volunteer at the local soup kitchen? Rather than learning how to interact with an Avatar, why don't we spend more time face to face with our students helping them learn how to interact with each other?

Keeping It Fresh

So I just signed into Prezi for the first time. I still remember when Power Point was first introduced. It was the rave and everyone started using it. If you didn't use it, it was like you were a pariah and your presentation was considered second rate. In truth, it did in fact help to organize ideas and present them in a linear way. But, the presentations were in fact then linear. The presenter would go from start to finish in a straight path with no real ability to fully connect multiple points of the presentation to another. Enter Prezi... This newish tool, which allows its users to develop more of a mind-map, enables the a presentation that is more fluid with multiple connection points. the presenter can easily move back and forth between ideas and layer the concepts visually. I found that it not only helps me present something nicely but also helps me think more clearly about the connection between the various pieces which I am presenting. I am sure that it will continue to push my thinking further as I use it more... until the next presentation software comes out and expands another aspect of visual presentation.