Monster Match 2008

October 18, 2007

I think we now have about 90 classes in our Monster Match for this year. It didn’t start out that big, but during the matching, I need about 4 more classes. It is quite a story how needing four more classes turned into getting 16 more!

The big change this year is that we are attempting to use a wiki to post descriptions instead of exchanging them via email. I got this idea from Angela Conrad who has her teachers post them to a bulletin board. She said it was easier for her to quickly see who had posted theirs. Last year, I had over 250 emails of communication and follow up, so I was looking for a better way.

I needed something that was secure-ish and that teachers did not have to create an account for. I started out trying a blog. I thought that I could make a post with each of the set of partners’ names and then they would post their descriptions as a comment. Then I moved to the wiki format. I love PBwiki so I made the Monster Match WIKI. I made a training video and taught some of my building coordinators.

We will see how well it works. I have had doubts this week. I have Web 2.0 overload. Do I really need 70 Cool Collaborative tools, or do I just need one that will help me accomplish the task at hand?

I am starting to think it is “Web 2.MUCH!” until a few minutes ago when I checked my Bloglines account and realized that I subscribed to the Monster Match wiki and all the changes that happened today were sitting right there, all in one place, with the teacher’s name and time the changes were made.

Posted in Collaborative Projects, Monster Match