Skip to main content

Simple Wikipedia for Quick Details

Wikipedia, in my mind, is one of the great innovations of the Internet age.  I know there are many people who disagree, but I have done extensive research on the way each site is maintained and have great faith in it.  Besides our students are going to use it regardless of how much teachers are against it.  But if I had one criticism of it, it is that it is too wordy for what we need in our classrooms.

Enter "simple Wikipedia."  Type in something you want to look up, such as Einstein and then "simple wikipedia" and you will get back a one page summary that even begins with a one hundred word mini summary and then provides links and summaries on the side.   So if you need more depth, you can go find it elsewhere.  But if you are looking for some quick details, it is better than Wikipedia.

What I love the most about this is that I found out about it from my daughter Madison. Isn't that the way it should work.  Teachers teach and then learn from their students in a symbiotic relationship. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Homework Reminders

When I want to quickly contact my online students, I use Remind.com .  It allows you to send a text without knowing their phone numbers.  Additionally you can set a time for it to be sent.  You can add a link and/or upload a document.  If you choose, you can also text individual students.  All of the texts are recorded and kept as long as you keep the class. Above is a video giving you a great overview and here are several videos explaining how to use different parts of it. If you use Blackboard, the video below shows you how to embed Remind texts into a Blackboard page.

How to Make Your Own Flip & Tutorial Videos

Over the years I have made lots of video tutorial for my blog followers and flip videos for my students .  Every single one of them have been made using Screencastomatic .   You can purchase your own yearly subscription, but I have not only never paid, but also never even set up a free account. You don't need to since you can make the video and then just upload it onto YouTube. Watch the video above and you will be able to see how to record, add you talking (or not) to the recording and to upload it - all in less than two minutes.  Go forth and make your own tutorials and teach lots of others.  In a later post I'll show you how to organize your YouTube video library.  

Snow Days Online

So we have a potentially major snow storm coming to DC this week.  I am thankful that we have the technology to make up for not having school, esp. in classes like AP or IB ones where time can't really be missed and your students are more likely to do the work at home.  Of course my online students get to work no matter the weather.  So how can you get your brick and mortar students to work on a snow day. For my online kids I use Blackboard Collaborate so I would create a shell for the brick and mortar students as well and set an agreed upon time to meet which I reminded them about a few days before a snow storm.  If you don't have something like Blackboard Collaborate you could you a Google Plus Hangout live stream where you could send a link to your students and they could watch a live lecture ( here's how ).    You could then use Today's Meet to send a link to students and you could see their live questions.   You would be able to do this b...