Over the summer, one of our courses was Web-based learning, and at the end, we had to create a tele collaborative project. Mine centered around six-word stories, helping students learn the power of words when they're chosen judiciously and purposefully. Supposedly the first six-word story was written by Hemingway, who, when asked what was the best thing he ever wrote, replied: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." That can be interpreted so many ways. A book of six-word stories came out a couple years ago, and I've had my students write them for a while. This would have all been done through a website that teachers would be able to join, and it would be monitored. I would have been the one designing and managing the site, which would have been accessible to teachers around the world.
With a Web 2.0 tool, like a wiki or a blog, getting everything up and running would be much simpler than building a whole website. I could go to PBWorks, start a wiki, and get a number of other site "administrators" to help with ensuring the content is appropriate. And where the website would have only allowed uploading of text, with a wiki, I could more easily allow people to add videos or audio, instead of just the text of their six-word stories.
The biggest benefit of the Web 2.0 tools is the ease both for me and for those who wish to contribute and benefit from the site. The biggest challenge would be maintaining the quality of the wiki and ensuring that content is appropriate. I'd have more control with a blog, where comments would require approval, but that also means more work, and I think a less user-friendly environment, because with a wiki, I could set up pages for stories on different topics or involving different categories.
2 comments:
Laura,
I liked reading about your Web 2.0 updates. I also decided to update my summer project with a wiki. I did not even think about adding the teachers as administrators like you did, and I might have to steal that idea from you! I wrote about how I was afraid students would change information that was not their own, but this would eliminate that issue. Thanks for the help!
Laura,
I, too, had not thought about adding teachers as administrators as a way to share the monitoring workload. I also thought Kevin's idea (see Maura's blog comments) to require all information be approved before it would be uploaded also probably serves a very important role in controlling what is allowed. Fascinating, isn't it? The possibilities just keep multiplying!
Lucia
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