File this under the category of "Why didn't I think of that?" NoteMesh is a wiki for courses. Damn simple and opens the eyes to the amazing ways wikis can change the rules. I wonder if Nittany Notes is paying attention? They better be!
Next semester when I am teaching I will use this as the backbone to all my lectures and let my students round out the notes. I am wondering what kinds of activities we could use this for to support teaching? I am planning on student teams doing weekly presentations on various topics -- clearly they can use this to plan their talks and let the class take notes while it is happening. New doors are opening all the time.
If you have a LMS (like ANGEL or BB) that has collaborative features enabled, what does this really add to the party? Ease of use?
Posted by: Michael Gowin | 09/25/2006 at 07:00 PM
Good question ... I have been finding that there is a more natural flow to information creation when it happens outside the LMS. What I am attempting to say is that the LMS is great for a lot of things and it doesn't seem to do collaborative writing all that well. The wiki environment is built to support just this kind of activity. ANother reason I like it is that it can live on after the course is completed and even shared to a larger set of people -- the LMS model is a walled garden for good reasons. But, at the end of the semester all that great content, student posts, class discussions, drop boxes, files, etc, is trapped never to be shared again. I like the idea of a group of students in the Fall being able to help create the basis for a course and then sharing that to the Spring semester students -- does that make sense?
Also ease of use, integration with FaceBook, web 2.0 flavor, and a host of other modern features makes this more compelling for my money. I feel it is also part of my responsibility to introduce my students to emerging technologies that can enhance their productivity -- most of these are outside the LMS space. Take Writely as an example -- something I thought was interesting was loved by my students. Just my two cents.
Posted by: Cole Camplese | 09/25/2006 at 07:00 PM
I have been using Writely for this type of purpose, but obviously that requires me to set up the document (or a student once they have an account). Other than that I am not sure what the advantage of NoteMesh is, but I will have to check it out.
Posted by: Scott | 09/26/2006 at 07:00 PM
I think the big difference is the ability to set up a course and let students search for and particpate in it. It looks like it isn't by provate invite only like a writely doc would be. It is worth exploring ... we shall see.
Posted by: Cole Camplese | 09/26/2006 at 07:00 PM