Wanting a Wiki??

Oh the Wonderful World of Wiki

Several conferences in 2008 had a wiki as the star attraction. A video explained a wiki by having a hand place pictures on a white board.  The suggestion was that wiki’s were a tool to help facilitate instruction and collaboration, however a cloud of doubt rolled into my thoughts: Why haven’t I seen any suggestions on how to integrate wikis into classroom instruction? It took about a semester of deeper delving to realize that not many examples of classroom wiki usage were out there.  So after a semester of playing, I have come up with some examples of what I have done using a wiki in the classroom: 

1.      Narrative wiki page: Each student made a page on a wiki explaining an event, including an image, and a link.
   
2. 2.     Posting Discussions: the teacher posts a question or discussion having students respond for homework.
   
3. 3.     Students can create their own wiki for independent reading/ book reports/ or term knowledge and invite others to the page.
   
4. 4.     Students can collaborate on a wiki page for information (note: currently students’ are still having trouble collaborating on a page without erasing work)
   

 Benefits of a Wiki

1.       Class has access to a sort of mail on the wiki that they can all correspond.
   
2. 2.     Can monitor times/ and who is doing what work on the pages.
   
3. 3.     Can be used to link and share resources.
   
4. 4.      The Wiki can be private or public.
   

Of course, the wiki takes some dedication and patience; the students need accounts, as well as some practice on the wiki. Even though these students are the digital natives, this is a relatively new/ unused program for them. The difference is how quickly they adjust to the new technology. Several of my students used it throughout the summer after introducing it during the spring term, and by the end of the fall 9 weeks they were using it as a regular digital medium.

The Moon Lesson. . .A Hit!

The moon lesson from Friday went extremely well. I uploaded the Moongirl video onto my Facebook and first hour a fellow English teacher came up to me and said that she had viewed it on my profile and wondered if I had it downloaded. I did and she borrowed it for her classes. My sophties had great discussions over the bombing of the moon. It really freaked some of them out! Others thought building a base on the moon would be quite a trip. They all really got into the movie, and especially enjoyed when the span of glass jars were shown. The best part of this lesson was that after the first class read the article, watched the movie, and combined the two stories, students from each class afterwards were excited to see the information for themselves. The lesson generated such interest that students were talking to each other about it outside of class. AWESOME!!! Hats off to my friends on Facebook, You Tube, and my husband.

Facebook, You Tube, Wii Created Lessons, Oh My!

Fridays, I like them to be days of weekly reflection and fun, sneaky learning. I thought we were going to do our assessment over Footloose (style, form, p. o. v.), and then watch a slide show of the students' summer. (The show was not completed.) Time for a change of plan. I noticed on that one of my friends had commented on facebook concerning NASA blowing up a peice of the moon. He left a link and I followed. It was an interesting read, and he had many comments over the topic. So, I decided to make it my fun bit of reading tomorrow. Nathan, my husband, just realized we have an Internet channel on the Wii with all the benefits that entails, and was catching me up on some entertaining You Tube videos. Among them was Moongirl, a short film by Henry Selick, director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Coraline. I decided my students would write a collision between the two pieces of information (one fiction, one nonfiction). Moonday tomorrow! I'll reflect on the lesson.

The Lesson:

Objective: SWBT (students will be able to) analyze form, style, and point of view from the movie Footloose, and combine a piece of nonfiction and fiction into a reflection.

Standard: R.10.10.20  Explain the influence of historical context on the form, style, and point of view of a written work

Plan:

1. Take an assessment over form, style, p. o. v.

2. Read NASA bombing moon.

3. Reflect for 2 minutes

4. Share out/ discussion

5. Watch Moongirl

6. On a moon graphic organizer combine the two stories as final reflection.