#5 Let's Create Something

You don't have to kill trees to get your point across.

Welcome to Environmental English –Let’s Create Something. In this Newsletter we will go into some places where you can host your work for FREE. That is the magic word for English Teachers. FREE. It has a nice ring to it doesn’t it? FREE! FREE! FREE! Ummmmmmmmmm. FREE (With Homer Simpson’s voice)

We’re going to look at three places to put your STUFF. It’s Free and they are pretty easy to set up. It does take time but it can be done.

WIKIs are probably the easiest and best places to go. You can leave the site name on their server or you can purchase a domain name from www.godaddy.com fairly cheaply and away you go.

A Wiki is basically WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) It’s kind of like dong a word document but a lot cooler. I know you are saying to yourself, “What could be cooler than being a Word Drone.” But, Scouts…. It’s possible. Most people have been lured, hoodwinked and horn swaggled into thinking that if it’s not Microsoft it’s not any good. Duh! The opposite is true.

Think about it….. You have been told for eons “It has to be Windows. Everybody is using Windows.” Well, those people telling you this garbage get $65 an hour to repair this tripe. You have been notified and warned so don’t come crying to me when your computing life comes to a stop.

A Wiki works in two ways.

1. Make a site everyone can edit

2. Make a site that only you can edit (locked)

It’s up to you.

First look at this video on how to make a site that can be edited.

Wikis in Plain English

http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english

Petty cool huh? You do have to make some video stuff. We will get into that at a later date.

The three wikis we are going to look at are

* Wikispaces
* Pbwiki
* Wetpaint

Wikispaces

www.wikispaces.com

Here are two links to sites that teachers in the IELP have put up for the students to use.

www.teachergary.com (Gary Harwell)

Nice site that has sixteen lessons with many areas covered in each week. Go, Look and see what can be done for free.

www.robertinoman.wikispaces.com (Robert Reese)

A very informative site with lots of free stuff for the students to engage in. Well worth a visit.

Both sites are at Wikispaces. It’s easy to use, basic and lots of features. You can experiment a lot and tweak it just like you want it.

Pbwiki

www.pbwiki.com

Another wiki that is pretty easy to use. It doesn’t offer as much storage as Wikispaces but easy to use never the less.

Site in pbwiki I put up a couple of years ago to experiment with.

http://levelfive.pbworks.com/

It’s OK and shows things you can put up.

Wet Paint

www.wetpaint.com

It’s nice but a little more difficult to use. Not so difficult to use that you can’t do it.

http://cd5.wetpaint.com/

Wikis are easy to use. I have given you three examples of places to go. You can put videos, audios, links to exercises and the list goes on and on.

By putting up a site for your students to use and assuming they will use it….. you don’t have to give them mountains of copies from Murphy’s and thus avoid the act of actually teaching in class and letting the students hide behind photocopies.

“Ours is not to reason and compare. Ours is to create. We must create our own system or be enslaved by another man’s.”


Try not to Kill Some Trees tomorrow.