My only true experience with Wikis up to this point was Wikipedia and, like most English teachers who do research as part of their curriculum, I'd always told my students that it's fine to look there, but I didn't want to see it cited in a research paper. With that said, I not-so-guiltily admit that if I want to know something, I usually go there first. I love that it provides link to other sources so I can start verifying the information if it's something that requires verification which, to this journalist, is almost everything. There's a joke in newspapering that if your mother tells you she loves you, you better find an independent source to verify it. So even at a "reliable" website, such as .gov or .edu, I'd still probably seek at least one other souce to verify information I found. I consider a healthy skepticism an important piece of being media literate.
Other than that, I'd never really considered Wikis and their potential in the classroom. But this exercise for grad school, and its timing, has be considering the possibilities. For example, on Wednesday, I gave my English 9 Honors students all their work for Wednesday through the weekend, in anticipation of the snowstorm closing school for the rest of the week. I explained the material, gave the work, and promised I'd check email regularly to answer questions. But literature (we're doing short stories) begs discussion, and working from home, alone, with just the book and the activity, pretty much ruins a huge chunk of my unit plan. But if there was a Wiki, I could still have the students participating in discussion and contributing to the "social construction of knowledge."
The challenges this produces is that not every student has a computer at home or internet access, and I'm not certain how to overcome that. I'm also thinking it might be a more "fun" and interactive way to do study guides for tests.
4 comments:
Laura I love your idea to do study guides on wiki's. What an interactive and collaborative way for students to share their knowledge of what they know on a topic and once the wiki is complete by your standards students could even go back and use it to study for the exam.
Laura, I also struggle with the fact that the population of my students are at povery level and therefore, do not have access to computers. Do you have a few computers in your classroom? Maybe for warm ups (at the beginning of the class) and as a center while students are working independently at their desks, students can rotate, like we did in our graduate class, submit their opinions or ideas on what you are studying or reading. I, too, like the idea of students working on wiki to synthesize their knowledge to create their own study guide!
Laura, unfortunately, no. The only computer in my room is the one I use.
In a perfect world, all of our students would have easy access to the Internet. Still, the possibilities you have discussed are exciting. What do you think about some sort of collaborative reading/writing project that connects elementary schoolers to high schoolers? Students in both classrooms could edit the Wiki--some sort of interview structure, or a group-written story...Just some thoughts...
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