Mary Ann Samuelson
Batavia HS
Inspired by Chad B's "Ref Wiki" and "Biz Wiki" at Ohio U., my goal is to develop a wiki that will be helpful to our sophomore students working on a research paper for the very first time. The wiki will provide information about the research process, the "how to" of finding library materials, and a guide to accessing our library subscription databases. I also want to
demonstrate the use of our bibliographic tool "Noodletools" for purposes of citation and note taking.
I see this wiki, ideally, as a collaborative effort involving myself as well as a number of sophomore English teachers. I need to meet with these teachers, explain to them how this
wiki might work and seek to make converts who will help breathe life into it. This could be the beginning of an ongoing "conversation" among us about the shape and expectations
for the sophomore research project.
Tool to use: PBwiki (?) Since as yet I have no experience with wiki creation, I want to use whichever wiki tool is the most flexible and user friendly.
Challenges: Getting the tool completely "unblocked" is primary! This hurdle overcome, my next challenge will be to design a wiki that is both useful and appealing to the students
and encourages teacher participation as well.
Comments (6)
deggert said
at 4:08 pm on Nov 16, 2007
Mary Ann, looking forward to wathcing your progress. We are always looking for ways to help our researchers and this would be so available
Roxanne Willard said
at 11:21 am on Nov 24, 2007
Mary Ann, I like the idea of an online research guide. Sometimes all it takes to introduce new tools is someone willing to take the risk and lead the way. I hope you'll be able to get it unblocked. Good luck!
Jill Feine said
at 9:11 pm on Nov 25, 2007
I think this is a great opportunity to introduce these tools to our teachers. Great start!
ghuot said
at 2:47 pm on Nov 27, 2007
Brilliant idea (I hope Paul heads in the same direction with the PHS wiki--and I am more than willing to help).
I can't think of a more effective use for a wiki to meet information literacy standards and content area standards seamlessly while implementing Web 2.0/Library 2.0 tools for the millennials.
Mrs. G said
at 3:17 pm on Nov 29, 2007
I think pbwiki is a good choice of tool. We have several teachers in our district using it to share information of all kinds--student projects, articles by the kids, etc. I like the idea of using it for research guidance, since you'll be able to edit it easily, frequently, and from anyplace with an internet connection. (We just used pbwiki this afternoon at a district librarians' meeting!)
Michelle said
at 9:26 am on Dec 18, 2007
This is a wonderful idea. When talking to the teachers, you could remind them that students will need help with their papers and research after hours, when only the internet is available to them. It would be nice if they could be pointed in a reliable direction instead of out into the wilds of the WWW.
In that vein, I would also include some Internet savvy skills to the research portal. Giving them some reliable places to go might help them start to differentiate between the good and bad on the web.
Great job.
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