(Competent in relating to other people)
In terms of this project, this means:
- Ik schep een klimaat voor online samenwerking met leerlingen op nationaal en internationaal niveau (I create a climate that encourages on-line cooperation with students on the national and international level.)
- Ik ben actief op MySN waar het gaat om het onderhouden van online relaties met leerlingen en studenten. (I am active on MySchoolsNetwork in terms of maintaining on-line relationships with secondary and college students.)
- Ik geef gemotiveerde feedback binnen MySN waar het gaat om gewenst en ongewenst gedrag. (I give clear feedback within MySchoolsNetwork in terms of desirable and undesirable behaviour.)
- Ik ben op de hoogte van de regels van netiquette en stimuleer het gebruikt hiervan bij mijn leerlingen.(I am up-to-date on the rules of netiquette and stimulate appropriate behaviour among my students.)
Wikispaces:
For several years I worked for the International Baccalaureate, leading workshops about twice a year in which I trained teachers about the Middle Years Programme and how to apply its principles in the Language A classroom. The participants came from all over Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and were often eager to exchange ideas and lesson materials. For that reason, at the last couple of workshops I led, I set up a wikispace for them, so that after the workshop they could continue to exchange materials with each other. A couple of examples are a workshop in Dubai in 2008 and one in Mombasa in 2010.
I was surprised to find that this tactic failed miserably. I showed the participants on the beamer at each workshop where it was and what they could do with it. They all expressed appreciation and said they would use it. In fact, almost no one did! Perhaps this has to do with age, i.e. the average workshop participant was a 'digital immigrant,' unlike the newest teachers today, who are 'digital natives.'
I also used wikispaces this year in teaching a workshop on rubrics at the NHL. In this case, I required the students to post the rubrics they created on the wiki so that the others could use them too. Perhaps because the students are 'digital natives,' or perhaps simply because they were required to do it, most of them did post their rubric, or sent it to me to post for them. It will be interesting to see if they go back there in the future to use rubrics from the wiki.
Update 2011: I went in February to another IB workshop, this time in Brussels. And this time I went as a participant, not as a leader. However, the leader was quite new and I suggested at some point that we set up a wiki so we all could share materials for the new curriculum we were learning about.
So that's what I did. This one was moderately more successful, in that there was a small flurry of activity in the first few weeks, but there's been nothing since. Oh, well.
