Tech Integration

Using a blog
Tried Wordpress for the English A1 course - responses to Keats' poetry.
Sent the students the link and asked them to post their responses to one of Keats' sonnets. Some did post - four out of six. It was stilted and unlike the free-flowing dialog it was supposed to be. Perhaps, if I had provided comments and sustained the dialog through responses, it may have continued and grown into a conversation.

CAS students in Gr 11 were encouraged to open a blog in blogspot and use it for their reflections. Some did and have invited their CAS coordinator to participate and add his comments. They have also uploaded photos to their blogs.

I use this blog for reflections related to Prof Dev, CAS and Technology. I tend to be erratic in my use. More regular use may be beneficial.

Using a wiki
In order to reduce the need to meet often and discuss points related to putting together the Essential Agreements / other Curriculum components for the English / Language Arts group at EBV, I set up a wiki on Wikispaces, gave a demo on its use, invited all members to the wiki and got it going at the end of 2007-2008. This school year i modified the member list due to changes. The wiki was visited but not used to the extent i would have liked. Once the Standards-based agreements were identified, the wiki was not revisited.
Indications are that there needs to be a clear purpose for a wiki to be used by our staff members. Again only some of the E ? LA group members actually contributed to the building of the wiki content. A few have yet to join the wiki.

I've just begun Google sites wiki for the W & R11 class center. All students have finally got gmail accounts, so they can use this site. They send me their assignments via Gmail. I convert these to Google Docs and store them in the students' folders. The use of Google sites together with Google Docs increase optios.
Eventually I hope to get them to set up their own Google docs and to park all their assignments , drafts, docs in their folders. This will save all the printing, the paper, the excuses.