BP7_2010032_Web2.0Tool3_Wikispaces

I learned last month how to make a Ning website so I was hoping some of those skills would transfer over to create a Wiki website. By the way, the reason I am changing to Wikispaces is because Ning requires students to be 13 and older and some of my 7th grade students are only 12 and therefore would not be able to participate. To avoid rebellion, I have chosen to switch to Wikispaces, where everyone can participate. After watching the informative Wikipaces tutorials and a little experimentation, I have found that Wikispaces is indeed similar to Ning (at times I feel like I am speaking an alien cyberspace language). I’d like to call my Wikispace a Wacky Wiki but it’s for school so I must refrain. Instead, I called it the FMS (Fillmore Middle School) Earth Day Wikispace. The wikispace is by invitation only while it gets developed.

Our group goal is to use the Wikispace to educate our local community about environmentalism. Our plan is to prepare at least 60 different environmental awareness and education projects to take to our local park on Earth Day. We go to the park on April 22 because that is where the parents are, attending softball games. It is a beautiful location near the Sespe Creek, just down from the mountains of the Condor Refuge. We plan to post to our FMS Earth Day Wikispace, the power point presentations, the environmental slogan songs, raps, and poems, the photos and videos taken at the park, and anything else creative or educational that comes out of the project. Our overall slogan is Earth Day Is Every Day, so we want the Wikispace to continue to house new material year round. We may add environmental awareness books for children, photoessays, poetry, "how to videos", and maybe even a Science in the News TV show. The possibilities are endless once we get permission to enter the clouds of Web 2.0.

We plan to film three guest speakers, a biologist who has tracked endangered Condors near our school, a Channel Islands National Park ranger who is planning to call on their radio an Island Fox research scientist who has helped to bring back the Island Fox from the brink of extinction, and a deep sea diver, who dives below 200 feet, that works for the Santa Barbara branch of Ocean Futures Society. Ocean Futures was founded by Jean Michael Cousteau to help bring awareness about the beauty and the spoiling of the oceans (see www.oceanfutures.org). We plan to post the videos to our Wiki. I can hardly wait to get things uploaded to our new Wiki.