ELT notes

ELT Teachers Using Wikis
(a mini directory)

As part of my summer learning in Jan and Feb, I joined an EVO Online workshop B4B (Blogging for Beginners). I joined quite late because I was busy designing my wiki for students. Among the participants, I found a few 'false begginers' in blogging who caught my attention for a number of coincidences:

• Mary Hillis in Japan
• Paul in Kumamoto, Japan
• Mônica Veado in Brazil
• Jennifer Verschoor in Buenos Aires, Argentina (Already in my mail contact list before B4B)
  

1. We have all set up our firsts blogs roughly around the same time (March 2006)
2. We were thinking and designing our first wiki projects in January 2007
3. We have chosen the same tools -Blogger and Wikispaces
4. We all use del.icio.us- pab, monicabh, jenverschoor, fceblog (only Mary, kushikatsu , uses the network)
   

Interesting, I thought. Similar experiences, objectives and potential seamless integration of the tools we are using. Lots of collaboration/network possibilities here.

I left comments in their blogs (here and here) and emailed them separately. Only to find even more coincidences:
-Jennifer and Mônica also teach Cambridge FCE courses.
-Mônica is also studying at university and intends to use the wiki project as part of her research.

Can it get any better? We'll see.

I think you've met but...
Now it's time to get to know each other better. Here is a detail of our online work:

Mary Hillis
Blog: One Teacher's Journey
Wiki: ESL for Migrants

Paul, Pab
Blogs:
Pab's Potpourri (for teachers)
The Writing Studio (for students)
LTD Project Blog
(for teachers)
Wiki: The LTD Project
(I'm a member of this wiki)

Mônica Veado
Blog:Movie Reviews (for students)
Wiki:Movie Reviews

Jennifer Verschoor
Blogs:
My Integrating Technology Journey (for teachers)
Open Classroom (for students)
Wiki: Open Classroom

And mine
Blog: The FCE Blog (for students)
Wiki: Corpus

I will be watching how these projects evolve. I hope you also post about them. Lot's to learn from each other, don't you think?

Apart from my posts here, I will also post brief updates from my Corpus wiki (see About this project).
I'll call it PLOG, i.e. production blog.


My questions to teachers with wikified classrooms
-How are your projects getting on? What are the difficulties you are encountering? Have your students welcomed new ways of learning?

Stay in touch.
(If you write about this in your blog, please link to this post's permalink so I'll find you.)
...............................

While we wait for comments, here's a reading list:

Links to other EFL wiki projects

For teachers
Dude has a wiki about Web 2.0 tools and innovative lesson plans and ideas,
EFL and Web 2.0

EFL Geek has an ESL & EFL wiki with forums.

And Graham has more than one, I am a member of this one:
Pod-EFL all about Podcasting ideas.
Evogaming

And the Webheads love wikis too, of course!
BaW07
Open Webpublishing
Barbara Diew's authors and participates in many wikis
Not so new and with an intriguing title, Writing Matrix, makes me wonder why sometimes collaborative wiki projects do not take off.

For students
Nancy, from Canada, has a well organised wikidot. She is concise and clear. Love her style.

Illya, who teaches CAE, has a wiki to organise vocabulary.
CAE Words

From Argentina, Rita Zeinstejer -the pioneer- worked with CAE in wikispaces last year. Her students took part in the IWE wiki. I saw a wiki of hers with students describing their city. Beautiful.
(Unfortunately I lost the link. Can you add it here Rita? Your work is a seed for mine)
...............

More in my del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us/fceblog/wiki

If you are not in my del.icio.us already, would you like to let us know about your wikis?

Labels: b4b, Barbara Diew, blogger, Corpus, del.icio.us, EFL Geek, Jennifer Verschoor, Mary Hillis, Monica Veado, network, pab, Rita Zeinstejer, Teacher Dude, webheads, wiki

Posted by Claudia Ceraso at 7:44 PM | Permalink | Comments View blog reactions