A busy year and a Student Notebook.

The year 2008 was exceptionally busy for me which unfortunately kept me from sharing with you my work with TiddlyWiki in the annals of education. With any luck this year will be a little different.

Over the last year I’ve spent a considerable amount of time on the Student Notebook project. This is an UnaMesa project developed with the assistance of Professor Andrew Lister (Queens University, Canada) which provides students with a tool that allows them to have a local copy of their class Wikispaces wiki (lecture slides and class materials) which is searchable and to which they can add their own private notes. Students also gain the ability to work with class wikis even when not connected to the internet and are able to synchronize with the online class wiki when they are connected

The local copy of the wiki is implemented using - you guessed it - TiddlyWiki. The choice of Wikispaces as the server-side wiki to use as the class wiki was based on its extremely intuitive user interface and excellent support infrastructure, which has made it one of the most popular wikis in educational circles. However the core technology developed can easily be adapted to work with most wikis.

More details on the project and the pedagogy behind using the combination of an online class wiki and a Student Notebook, as well as reports on the experience of trialing this is Andrew’s class over the last semester, can be found here.

Another component of this project which is under development is an Instructor’s Notebook which allows course instructors to author new content and lecture slides for the class wiki, keep their own private notes for slides, and present them in the classroom - all from one tool.

Future plans for the project include exploring the possibility of using this technology in parts of the world without persistent internet connectivity, to provide students with better access to educational materials. While the Student Notebook has thus far been customized for a particular educational workflow, we will also be making more generalized versions available in the near future which can be used by anyone wishing to have an offline and privately annotable copy of their Wikispaces wiki.

I’ll be posting more details in a few days on how the Student Notebook is being used in Andrew’s class, as well as a link to a public demo where you can try it for yourself and get a notebook to use with your Wikispaces wiki.