Reflecting Pools

I was familiar with wikis before this assignment because I collaborated on a portion of a university instructional technology wiki for a graduate class. The process was easy, and I learned a lot about wikis and about the many IT topics that our class investigated; but I must say the thing I learned most from that experience was the interpersonal glitches that can emerge in a non-face-to-face/virtual atmosphere.

Of our four teammates, two of us were highly collaborative, one was territorial, and one was lacking in personal responsibility–and that’s a nice way to put it. The territorial member resisted revision suggestions and resented changes made by another member. That person immediately recreated the original text and emailed the team not to violate that space. Hmmm…. The changes were needed, but fortunately could be viewed by the prof in the edits history. We had to stay on top of submissions by the irresponsible member because we caught a bit of copy/paste which we immediately purged and rewrote with credits. You do NOT do that–especially when others are counting on you!

I wanted to mention the above scenario first because it relates directly to our students. If I’m so excited about using a wiki that I never consider the possible frustrations my students could encounter, then I’m doing them a big disservice. If “mature” adult teams can have non-collaborative actions and honesty issues, you know that middle school students might have the same nightmares. Preemptive counseling and continued guidance in positive collaboration techniques are so important! I also think when we mentor teachers in IT, we need to help them anticipate “social decision-making” issues among the kids and how deeply the kids’ feelings and frustrations can run–just as my adult group’s did.

Although this may sound as though I’m against wikis, the opposite is actually true. I am really excited about the educational wikis that I’ve explored, and I’m already cooking up ideas for my 7th grade history and English students to wiki this year. (You’re probably thinking that I’m easily excitable, but I was already interested in using a wiki with my students, and this just fanned the flames!)

The Fayette High School site is loaded with ways that a wiki can support learning. Even though this site is for high school juniors and includes far more than I’d want to tackle (at this point, at least), it’s a great picture of using one wiki to support all of the classes for a teacher who teaches in two disciplines. Although the teacher maintains certain portions, the bulk of the site is created and managed by the students with everything from class news, dealines, handouts, resources, collaborative assignment creation boards, to an online book club and all sorts of map games.

One idea I really like from the Fayette Wolves Den is creating a curricular page with topic links to pages that students can select, research, and create. Another section gave me an idea that I evolved to a form with which I can challenge my own students: giving key terms in groups and having the students discover the relationship among the terms and create notes/paragraphs/graphic organizers to show the definitions and relationships. That’s critical thinking!

Although already cleared of many student contributions from this past year, the Room 15 Wiki showed what 6th graders could easily handle–an inspiration to a 7th grade teacher. I gained from the teacher tech tips and the writing prompts found at Glen and Karen Bledsoe’s authoring website.

The Teachers First Wiki Walk-Through provided me with many informed decisions I need to make before setting up a wiki, such as protection, administrative permission, and moderation. I got a lot of good ideas, as well, including students collaboratively creating travel brochures to explore geograph (history) or place and setting (eg., Dicken’s London for English or the Oklahoma Territory for history). Two other great ideas for English are collaboratively creating a resume for story characters or using the wiki for revising and editing in a collaborative writing workshop.

The site that blew me away, though, was the Turn Homeward, Hannalee site created by two fifth grade classes at Woodward. The teachers established the basic skeleton and categories of the site, then instructed the students, working in small collaborative groups, to create their assigned sections. The students researched and illuminated the setting and issues of the book; they created and embedded PowerPoints and Podcasts; and they analyzed perspectives, created timelines, and explained figures of speech and unique items of the time. Wow! I took an entire page of notes on the site, and I want to use the idea for my English classes the first semester of this year–say for Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol!

Wiki wiki! Hurry, hurry! I’ve so much I want to do before August!

Filed under: Learning K12 2.0 and tagged Add new tag, collaboration, wiki