Wiki Reflection

Well...I think I like the Blog better for use in my classroom.  It is laid out a little better, has design templates for the students to use, and it also has HTML editing, which they get excited about because they know how to change color, font, video player size, etc.  I am still working out the kinks before I have the students start designing and publishing to either one. 

The wiki I created for two of my classes is working better than the Blog only because I was able to upload a Flash Video that one of my students created (see Eric's Tech Stuff, under the Audio Video Technology class folder, http://axtechnews.pbworks.com/w/page/35578984/FrontPage). When I uploaded it at work, in the classroom, I only saw a white box.  The technology director checked all filters and can't figure out why it didn't upload...BUT...when I got home, it was on the wiki.  Since then we have not had any power at the school so I can't see if it shows up there.  My suspicions are that it won't.  I think I need some sort of video command to make it work and I have to learn how to put it on Blogger or PBSworks, and have no idea of how to do this.  We are still trying to figure it out.  It's really great that the students and their friends and family can see the videos from home but it is disturbing for them to upload their work and only see white boxes at school.  Kinda hard to teach design principles when the layout is entirely a blank page.  If anyone has encountered this problem and knows how to fix it, I am all ears.

I really see the benefit of using both a wiki and a blog with my students.  My only concern at this point is that there is a level of frustration and doubt that comes when technology doesn't want to work right.  I don't want my students frustrated and I don't want them to loose faith in what I am teaching them...so for now, just until things start working as they should at school, I will have to just keep this lesson on hold.  We are still creating websites in Dreamweaver and learning how to put the Flash animations in the HTML code.  This is a great learning experience for them and so far is satisfying their need to put something online.  Of course they don't have a web hosting site but they can save their Dreamweaver file to a flash drive and open the HTML site from home.