Choose Your Own Wiki Adventure – NECC 2006

I’ve given a number of presentations and workshops in the last ten years, but today was the most significant. As I waited in the front of rom 31 B/C for my session to begin, I wondered how many of the 337 seats would be filled. As 12:30 approached, I was becoming hopeful that it would be a good-sized crowd. When I finally began the presentation, I was shocked to see people standing the back and sitting in the aisle (not quite every seat was taken, but it was close). My usual groups are around 20-30 people. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I once did a presentation to four people. It was a lot of work for four people. Once I got started the jitters I initially felt disapated.

I spent the next hour discussing the use of wikis in the K-12 classroom. I called the session Choose Your Own Wiki Adventure because the largest part of the session focused on the Holocaust Wiki Project. This project has students create a branching simulation about the Holocaust. I also reviewed Wiki basics, drew from Bernie Dodge’s EduWiki Design Patterns, and showed my other two Wiki projects, Strategies of WWI Wiki WebQuest and AP World History Review Project.

Overall, I was pleased – it was probably one of my best presentations. I felt like I connected with the audience and most people stayed throughout the whole session (I know leaving a session part way through is a conference habit). I didn’t leave enough time for questions, but a number of people stayed after to discuss some specific elements of the projects. It was supposed to be podcast, but there was a microphone problem and apparently it wasn’t salvageable.

There were three people in attendance who blogged about the main elements of the session at the Tech Savvy Teacher, Educational Technology and Life (he also took the picture), and Ed Tech: The Blog. Thanks guys for the reviews!

I posted the PowerPoint and important links here.

I don’t think I’ll make Atlanta for next year’s NECC, but maybe in 2008!