Still Plugging Away

Nothing really new to report. I'm still working on the wiki, which I think is one of the best things going for education, and trying to do what I can to make all of my students "proficient" in the eyes of the all knowing department of education. The wiki was actually accessible in school last week. It was short lived though. What happened I don't know, but I know that on Monday, students were saying that the could get in during school and were pretty happy about it. Then on Wednesday I started hearing that they were blocked again. I will most likely never know what happened, but the response was great when the could get in and use it. When it's actually accessible, maybe I'll have more students taking part in keeping it up and adding to knowledge base. BUT, like I was told, "It's like changing course on a large ship. It takes time." While I think that 19 weeks is MORE that sufficient, apparently it's not.
I'm also still working on finding some blogging that will engage the students more. The big issue is that there are sooo many this year that are unwilling to put effort into anything at all. I'm getting a bunch of comments that sound as if the students are in early elementary and LOTS that are mere recounts of earlier posts. Laziness is the common thread this year. There are students that are great, read and comment, question and think, but they are really outnumbered this year. Even when the idea is to check out some video, some evidently don't even take that much time/effort and type a line of BS attempting to act like they did the assignment. While their grades reflect this, as long as the assignment doesn't show up as a "0" they're happy. I'll continue to work on this aspect and try to do what I can to make this more useful and draw more students into taking active rolls.
For now, as we approach the midway point of the school year, it's time to perfect what's out there and not go nuts trying too many things. I think that this approach is sensible and might result in improvements.
By the way, wikispaces ROCKS!!!! I love the setup and ease of use! It's so nice, even though the tech department here claims that wikispaces itself states that it's "not recommended for education" (why then are the offering 100,000 free wikis to educators?), it is really the most useful and simple to add to and edit web presence going. Parents seem to like the idea of knowing what we're doing, and a FEW students have commented on using it while they're out sick. I have to admit that it could be better on my end. If it were accessible to all during school, I'd have to put more on there. Until then I'll keep them coming with previews of tests, etc. I hope that I can continue to push the envelop here and bring my little district up to date without too many issues.
Hope all is well in your education world!
Good luck