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A year or two ago reports in the media of rampant misinformation on Wikipedia damaged the good news about Wikis. If you're still operating from the point of view that Wiki's are bad, you could be missing the boat.A Wiki is great way for students to collaborate. Wiki's come in many varieties. PB Wiki offers many free benefits to educators that they charge for-profit corporations to use (their list of corporate clients includes CitiBank and Cisco Systems). I have had my students try a variety of Wiki programs and PB Wiki was by far the most student-user friendly. In a matter of minutes a class of 17 students was collaborating on making a comparison of cultures chart.A quick list of PB Wiki features: Add pictures. Add links between Wiki pages or to external websites. Embedding of Video.How much time does it take a teacher to set up a PB Wiki to use with students? Less than five minutes. 1. Create an account (1 minute) 2. Select a name for Wiki and an html address for the Wiki. In … [Read more...] about Online Student Collaboration (Wiki Q&A)

I love videos that explain complex concepts in simple terms. This cartoon video about the sub-prime mortgage crisis just aired on Current TV.Applications for EducationCartoons and other animated illustrations are fun and simple ways to introduce students to complex concepts. CBS features a series called Fast Draw that tackles different ideas with simple whiteboard explanations, Common Craft also uses simple whiteboard explanations to introduce viewers to technology resources. … [Read more...] about Cartoon Explanation of the Sub-prime Mortgage Crisis

Last week I wrote a short blog post about Google Docs offering holiday themed templates for creating greeting cards. Today, I was reminded, by Center Networks, of a free, high quality e-card service called My Punch Bowl. I've personally used My Punch Bowl in the past year to send cards when I've forgotten a birthday. I like My Punch Bowl because you can customize so much more than just the message that accompanies the card you send. You can include your own pictures in the cards you send as well as use your own font style.Applications for EducationI remember when I was in the fifth grade my teacher, Mrs. Zahowski, made us all write create greeting cards in which we had to include a letter to a family member. At the time I thought it was kind of hokey, but 20+ years later I now realize that she did that as method of teaching us letter writing skills and formatting. Using My Punch Bowl is a 21st Century method of using the same lesson that Mrs. Zahowski taught me, but without the … [Read more...] about My Punch Bowl

Plagiarism, we all hate it, but how can we teach students to avoid it and how can we detect it? Just as the Internet makes plagiarism easy, the Internet also makes detecting plagiarism and prevent plagiarism easy. What follows are ten resources for detecting plagiarism and teaching students to avoid plagiarism.Detecting Plagiarism1. The most obvious way to check a student's work for plagiarism is to do a quick search on Google. If you notice that a student has strung together some phrases that you don't think they've written, put the suspected phrase inside quotation marks and search. You may want to search on Google as well as on Google Scholar.2. The Plagiarism Checker, created as a project for the University of Maryland, is an easy tool for detecting plagiarism. Simply enter a chunk of text into the search box and the Plagiarism Checker will tell you if and from where something was plagiarized.3. Doc Cop offers a free service for checking small documents and a free service for … [Read more...] about Ten Resources for Preventing and Detecting Plagiarism