Thing # 9 Play with Wikis

After reviewing several online tutorials on wikis and exploring wikis other than wikipedia through wiki.com, I decided t explore what kind of assignments I could develop and deliver at Episcopal High School using a wiki as a foundation to explore many of the 16 things covered in this blog.  Here is what I developed.

First, what makes a wiki diferent from a Portal, Blog, or Google Doc assignment involving collaboartive work?

Second, How can wiki's be assessed? Is there a difference, consider Google docs that can record individual contributions to collaborative assignments?

Third, what type of assignment takes advantage of a wiki's tools?

I am not sure I have an answer to these questions yet.  I suspect, assignments that don't have an obvious ending would work best.  Assignments geared toward describing or reporting a topic.  I am thinking of course of wikipedia.  Students could pick historic figures to write about or greographic locations or scientic discoveries or any number of  classifiable topics of an endless depth and variety.  Each successive class could build upon previous classes.  Pedagogically, I would theorize that each successive class would improve upon the level of work tendered by preceeding classes.

How can you use a wiki in your classroom? Here is a sample "Grade Level Learning" assignment for the  Freshman Class.

Overview
During GLL 2014, the freshman class will divided into groups of 12 to 16 students and two teachers. These classes will learn several Web 2.0 tools while promoting a community services event. They will check each other's work in a peer review fashion and finally present their projects to the whole group.

Assignment:
Look at http://mashable.com/2007/07/20/online-productivity-god/ this site has 400+ web.20 tools to help you become more productive.  Have students go to thinkinginschool.wikia.com and select a combination of tools to promote  a non profit organization of their choice online.  An example would be to promote the Houston Food Bank  by taking pictures during our community service days, then loading the photos into flicker.  Then open a wiki page that describes the soup kitchen, it's mission, members of the community (with their permission) and history.  User tools like mosaica, jigsaw, Wordle, or Voki to tell there story and to encourage your classmates to volunteer at the Houston Food Bank.

45 Minute class periods.

You are the scaffolding to support students.

Day 1 Form Teams, Pick Non-profits, discuss project possibilities.
Day 2 Define projects per team, Obtain faculty approval.
Day 3&4 Research Non-profits
Day 5 & 6 Complete history page of wiki
Day 7 Add "tools" and finalize content
Day 8 Work day, Peer to Peer review
Day 9 & 10 Presentations.

Technological
Allow students to form into groups of two or three students.  They should select their own non profits and in a class wide, teacher moderated discussion, toss out and discuss various combinations of wen 2.0 tools, themes, and techniques they could use to develop their wiki page and promote their venue. This is a Cloud based assignment and should therefore be accomplished on or off campus.

Pedagogical
Assessment will be based on student out comes and the assignments will be project based.  Encourage meaningful learning by empowering student teams to decide as many contributing factors as possible.
Remember to make students responsible to complete their tasks on time.

Content Knowledge

Student should be able to reflect one the tools they selected to use in their wiki. Each student team needs to provide clear, accurate , and motivational pages with the goal to persuade the viewer to choose their featured organization. Use appropriate citations for copyrighted material.


Reflection piece - Describe how you developed these skills in your student teams.
perseverance
collaboration
communication
Trust
commitment

Thing # 8 Wikis

Wiki,

A wiki is basically a website that many people can edit. It is a collaboration. If you believe that many hands make light work, then you will reveille in wiki. In the early to mid 90's, code generators were being developed that could translate simple word documents into HTML coded web pages.  In those days WYSIWYG [what you see is what you get], interfaces for operating systems and word processors were constantly being upgraded.  Recall MS DOS 5.1 and how Windows 3.1 and subsequently Window 95 solidified the movement into graphics. The world wide web at the same time was growing exponentially. The problem with the web's growth was the paucity in talented and knowledgeable website designers or programmers.

In education, the use of the Internet was immediately obvious for many but coding as site was an obstacle,  The solution arrived in the form or bulletin boards like Mustang and later code generators like Contribute and Dreamweaver. But these methods were still cumbersome and not widely adopted.  In 1995 the first Wikis appeared.  These were websites designed to allow WYSIWYG in put and editing by many people.  The key to the definition is website editing by many contributors.

Wiki Wiki is an Hawaiian vernacular for "fast." Many people collaborating together to create a website is a Wiki.  The most famous and the largest wiki is Wikipedia.   In Wikipedia, people around the world and in several languages contribute definitions to topics regularly.  Imagine the empowerment you could provide students in your class if you were to assign them the responsibility to create an encyclopedia of world geographic in your classroom.  Then, trust them to provide peer to peer review.

Here is a start Thinkinginschool.wikia.com  this is a wiki I set up to help research thinking in schools. My goal is to build up a body of research that can help teachers mentor higher level thinking skills while building a professional learning community. Here is an intermediate level of the same wiki above; but with, a different host. The Grade Level Learning Project. In grade level learning, the students were learning from eachother once the project gained momentum. The students worked in teams of three with each having a defined role to play.  The artist was tasked with audio, video, and still images that supported the assigned theme. The editor was assigned the task of proofing the copy the was used.  The last role was that of leader.  The leader filled in all the gaps, coordinated interviews and managed their wiki's overall structure.  All three had to deliver an equal amout of participation in the oral report that showcased their site at the end of the project.

My next wiki project is just beginning to take form.  I have selected peanut butter work's as the host.  I like their educational templates and role based permissions.  The free version allows for 100 users composed of either faculty or students. Thinkinschool.pbworks.com is the new site.

Thing # 7 Image Generators

Wordle rules this category.  Wordle almost makes you wish you taught English.  With a paragraph of your words, you can create magic.  Then you can take your magical design and print it on coffee cups and insert them in all manner of documents.




When I think of Wordle I think of word clouds.  Like clouds that challenge your imagination to envision all sorts of floating characters, Wordle uses words as opposed to water droplets to achieve the same thought provoking images for the consumers contemplation.

Wordsift is similar to Wordle only it truly adds a word cloud in the form of a linear map similar to a mind map.  I used text from a random blog on education and develop a  nice word design, in Wordsift the mind map is made automatically.  Wordsift like Wordle offers filter categories to determine the size, spacing, and frequency words are displayed

In class, you could demonstrate the importance of words by having students choose various filters and discuss their relevance.  For example the math filter in Wordsift looks for words related to numbers and formulas and then changes their color.  In Wordle your students could link word font size to frequency in which the word is used thus arguably liking frequency to importance. I once loaded class syllabus into Wordle to draw attention to TPACK, pedagogy and meaningful learning as points stressed in that particular test.

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These tools could be used by a teacher to facilitate a study in Gardner's multiple intelligences as it relates to visual, audible, and graphic learners.