Bali

Editing my wiki

I've just edited the Biology wiki by merging Raj's post with mine to make it look more coherent (I hope!) I can't seem to find out how to change the colours or font. Hmmm.. will try that again someday.

Podcasting

This is so new to me.

I am glad I read the reading materials first. Also glad to have browsed Sha's blog on her experiences with podcasting, so that as familiar words mentioned in her blog started popping up it was easier to know what to do next.

OK, now that I've got Audacity and solidcasts.... what do I do next? Go purchase a microphone?

My first wiki

I wasn't sure what was expected of me in this exercise initially, so I posted up some introductory stuff about Biology.

Biology is the study of life and the activities of all living organisms, including respiration, nutrition, excretion, movement, reproduction and growth. What makes the study of Biology so interesting is that students are able to relate what they are studying to their own body systems, how each organ works, how they are all inter-related and homeostatically-controlled. For example, when students learn about the workings of the kidneys to filter out all waste metabolic by-products, they also learn how the liver first synthesises the waste products and transports them via the blood circulatory system to the kidneys to be removed.
Even studies on plant systems become interesting when students are able to appreciate the processes carried out in plants like food-making (photosynthesis), loss of water vapour from surfaces (transpiration) and transport of food substances around the plant (translocation).


Then the CENL moderator wrote:

Can you think of any ways that the technologies we have been looking at in our course can be used in the teaching of Biology?

So I re-read the question in the assignment pages and found out I was supposed to see how social bookmarking, blogs and wikis were supposed to be a part of the teaching and learning of Biology, so I went in to add more to my wiki.

Use of social bookmarking in the teaching of Biology. Useful articles that are related to a particular topic can be tagged using the Delicious platform. Both the lecturers and the students are able to access these articles easily from any computer.

Blogs can be used by students to make notes of a particular topic after a particular class. For example, after a topic on Excretion, the student adds a blog on what are the important points that the lecturer has given in the class. This blog is accessible to the classmates for the benefit of all. Likewise, lecturers can also use blogs to build a platform of knowledge-sharing amongst colleagues teaching the same subject.

Wikis can also be used as a means of note-taking, or reflective learning, after which the classmates can also edit, add on or delete. Of course, the lecturer has the last editing to complete the work. This piece of work can be saved for future intakes or cohorts as supplementary notes. Wikis can also be used when students undergo project work without the need to meet too regularly.

I am still not very sure if that is all that is required in this wiki exercise, but am happy to have learnt a new tool and excited that I can go in and out of my wiki to edit or add my work and now that another colleague under the same grouping has added his post, perhaps I'll edit his too!