Haugen’s Tech Tips Blog

As I approach a new session of my after school publishing program, I decided to use a wiki to see if I could help make the process clearer to students and give them more opportunities to work independently. My Edison Student Publishers Wiki includes information about the program, and tips to help my 3rd-5th grade students:

• Choose a Project – news, reviews, interviews, puzzles, comics, jokes, etc.
• Find News or Information – web sites, people, papers, etc.
• Find Help with Writing – news, poetry, fiction, more
• Find or Make Images – photos, drawings, online tools, more
• Make a Puzzle – links to puzzlemaker, our puzzle starters and more
• Work on Layout – under construction

I’m excited about how this program is evolving and the wonderful, creative work kids can do. I’m new to wikis and I think this may be the first one I’ve done that approaches being useful! I’d love any feedback or suggestions on improving this kind of resource.

In response to a query from a teacher on behalf of her first grader who wants to ‘get into publishing,’ here are some links to online sites that encourage or allow students to publish their work online:

• Tips for children publishing on the Internet. | NetAlert – From the Australian government, a helpful set of safety and design tips for any students who would like to publish their creations on the web.
• Young Writer’s Clubhouse – The young writer’s clubhouse gives you tips on how to be a writer, from author Deborah Morris. Join the Critique Group to share poems and stories you’ve written and share feedback with other kid writers.
• KidPub – Read stories other kids have written, or join KidPub (for a fee) to publish your stories online.
• Stone Soup – Read what kids write or submit your own stories to this classy magazine.
• Young Writers Association – this is a local stop for those of us in Eugene, OR.

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  Mango Languages – HomeMango beta is an online language learning system freely available to everyone. Learn at your own pace with a suite of features that make language learning more engaging and fun.

  (tags: multilingual free cooltools tutorials language/foreignlang)

From Edublogs themselves (the folks who host this blog and will host your education-oriented blog for free, too!), here are ten ways to-use your edublog to teach. From discussions to newsletters, sharing lessons, materials and assignments to posting events and dates, here are concrete ways a blog can enhance your teaching and your students’ learning experience.

SchoolNetAfrica is a pan-African education portal for practitioners, policymakers and school communities across the continent with resources in English, French, Kiswahili, Portuguese and Arabic.

SchoolNetAfrica is made up of the African Education Knowledge Warehouse:

• SchoolNet Centre, which has tools and resources to support national SchoolNets
• Policy Centre, which provides resources and studies to support policy development on ICT integration in education
• Learner Centre, which houses resources for learners and provides space for networking and collaboration among young people
• African Teachers Centre, the meeting place for the African Teachers Network
• Gender Watch, which houses gender and ICTs related resources and captures voices of women and girls using ICTs for their advancement
• Innovation Watch, which tracks innovations and innovators to inspire learners and educators in using ICTs for Education
• Campaigns, which include their One Million Computers for African Schools campaign.

Their campaigns include:

• One Million Computers for African Schools
• Global Teenager Project
• Researching ICTs for Education in Africa
• Building African SchoolNet Champions
• Supporting National SchoolNets
• African Teachers Network
• ThinkQuest Africa
• From Guns to Computers

On a personal note, I’m delighted to call as a friend Babacar Fall, from Senegal, one of the governing members of SchoolNetAfrica.