Roxanne Willard
East Rochester 5-8 Librarian
Goal: Create a wiki for 8th grade Enriched English class to share ideas and record their progress on a year-long author study.
Tools: PBWiki. Wiki software geared towards educators that includes no ads, and features such as RSS, HTML support, and Word-like editing capabilities.
Steps:
1. Meet with teacher and class to select authors for project
2. Learn to use PBWiki and gain basic trouble-shooting skills.
3. Set up Wiki, and schedule time to teach wiki tools to students.
4. Instruct students on the wiki editing and ethical use.
Challenges: Student misuse of wiki, learning curve for teacher and librarian.
Students will be taught about ethical use of the wiki, and informed of the consequences of misuse. Teacher and librarian will continue to enrich their own knowledge of PB Wiki and refine their skills through practice.
Follow-up: Monitor wiki regularly and make adjustments as necessary. Meet with students every 6-8 weeks to discuss any issues and provide individual or small-group instruction.
Comments (5)
ddonohue said
at 8:17 pm on Nov 15, 2007
Hi Roxanne,
This sounds like a good project. Will each student get his/her own page or wiki to work on, or are they doing group work? I am also setting up a wiki using PB as it is not blocked. I will not be at the meeting tomorrow, but Anne-Marie had some good ideas about how to set it up for space if you get a chance to talk to her.
deggert said
at 4:12 pm on Nov 16, 2007
Roxanne, I enjoyed learning more about you project today. I am sure it will come out great. This will really make your students think as a group. They can feel connected to each author!
Mrs. G said
at 8:35 pm on Nov 20, 2007
I'm looking forward to seeing what your kids do. I love that it's going to be a year-long project--that really plays to the one of the real strengths of a wiki: letting the kids get the hang of continually improving a product. So much of what students have to do is forgotten the day after they hand in a project--with your wiki, they'll get to revise, rework, improve and expand their wiki pages. Cool!
Jody Duggan-Lay said
at 10:22 am on Nov 24, 2007
This idea blends nicely with my wiki plan so I will be keeping an eye on it to see how it goes. We will have to share our experiences of working with 8th graders on wikis!
Michelle said
at 9:36 am on Dec 18, 2007
Great idea. This is also a nice venue with which to share with parents and other teachers. Maybe next year the History classes will put one of their big projects on a wiki as well. The success of this project could pave the way for other collaboration efforts.
In creating the use policies, you may want to put them in writing on the wiki so that you, the teachers, and the students have them in physical form. Putting policies in writing is never a bad idea. It might be interesting to let the students have a hand in the creation of the policies as well. You may be surprised by the rules they are willing to place on themselves.
Great project. Good luck.
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