On to the world of Wikis. After exploring some of the educational wiki project links provided I can begin to see how wikis can be a great teaching tool. I can also see that in Thing 8 we have just begun to scratch the surface about the myriad of ways to use wikis for educational purposes.
I was happy to see that high schools are teaching about the Holocaust in their AP World History classes. The Holocaust Wiki Project was very interesting. I thought that the teacher provided some good links to get the students going on their project. I thought it was very neat that the students had to create “branching stories” about families in the Holocaust. As Stacy Brown said in her blog post, it reminded me of the “choose your own adventure” books that we have in our library. It was interesting to see the different interpretations of what the students thought was entailed in the assignment. I thought that for this wiki project students would definitely need to explore the history of the before they could write about their Holocaust family. I felt that the learning outcome was good-instead of just learning the historical facts it personalized history, and hopefully, helped the students to realize what a horrendous event the Holocaust was. I was surprised when I heard that these were AP high school students since some of the projects did not seem very high level. I felt that the project could have been improved by having the students edit their projects more, especially for grammar and spelling, since it was going out on the web in a wiki for all the world to read. Some of the projects really needed more editing, such as capitalizing “Jews”, and correcting spelling mistakes. I like the concept that students can collaborate on a project online-it has always been hard to get students together outside of school to do “group projects” so being able to work together via the internet is great!
I also looked at the Kubler Reading Wiki to see the activities a teacher had set up to help Grade 4 students with their study of Natalie Babbitt’s book, Tuck Everlasting. I thought this was a great way to introduce children to using a wiki. I was amazed at how detailed these students were able to be when they did their jobs on the wiki, whether it was being character cartographer, creative connector, etc. I liked the way the teacher switched the roles for each child with each chapter, and how each reading role had an illustration to help illustrate the activity. I wonder, though, if this was a bit too much to do for the book. But, not being a classroom teacher, perhaps not. It seemed like it would get a bit tedious after a while, having write so much detail for each chapter. I did like the “Creative Connector”, which encouraged the students to go beyond the content of each chapter, and think about how they could connect events in a chapter to their lives or to other parts of the book. Compared to the Holocaust wiki, the teacher or someone did go back and edit the children’s work for spelling, etc. All of the activities were written, as opposed to using other media as well such as podcasts, slide shows, drawing, etc. I think a bit more variety would have made the tasks more interesting.
I found Mr. Lindsay’s Room 15 Wiki ok but not great. There were some good features such as news and events, homework, students’ blogs, etc. I found that there was just too much information at times, such as the links to Delicious, etc. and I did not think it was always as user friendly as it could be. I was trying to read the student’s book reviews and I never could locate that spot. I think having a classroom Wiki is a great idea for every classroom teacher, especially Middle School, but it needs to be well organized and designed.
The Grade 5 Turn Homeward, Hannalee Wiki from Woodward Academy was a good example of an amazing exploration of a Civil War era historical novel. It was a good example of what can be done when two fifth grade teachers collaborate with their Technology instructor to create a project. Well done, Shelley! It was well organized, easy to use, and what was especially neat was the variety of activities done by the students using different modalities via powerpoint, slideshows with actual photos and children’s drawings, audio clips, etc. This would probably be a daunting effort without the help of the school’s tech person. I was amazed at how much history they were able to learn in conjunction with the book, including a field trip to a mill. I would love to see a project like that at my school!
My initial thoughts on how I can use wikis personally? I think it would be great to have a wiki, either per grade level or through the media center where kids can post their thoughts on books they have read-did they read a great book- what was it about? Why they would recommend it, etc. They could write a short blurb to share book recommendations with their classmates. My only thought is- should there be an adult reading their posts first-what if they are reading a book in Gr. 4 that is really more appropriate for Gr. 9 due to sexual or other more mature content? Would we monitor contributions? Should we monitor contributions? I think other schools do have wikis for children’s book reviews and I would love to see what others are doing with this.
