1. Wednesday, January 31
2. Wednesday, February 7
For those of you who like group work and collaborative projects, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that provides “free access to the sum of all human knowledge,” might be very intriguing as a classroom tool. With that in mind, here are your homework assignments, all designed to get you confortable enough with wikis so that they might become part of your curriculum:
1. Read chapter 4 – Wikis: Easy Collaboration for All
2. Visit some of the Examples of Wikis in K-12 Classrooms on pages 67-70
3. Write a comment or two on this post, detailing your thoughts on the place of wikis in education (as both a tool for output and input). What are the potentials? What are the risks?
4. Visit Wikipedia.org and search for Newark Valley. Browse the entry and make a list of all categories that could be added to that Wikipedia entry. Post your list as a comment on this post.
5. We’ll be expanding on this Newark Valley entry during our next meeting, so bring any materials you have on the history of the village, or any current documents that might help build a more expansive and up-to-date entry.
4 comments:
One positive aspect of wikkis in education is the possible expansion of the student’s role from consumer to author to editor. Wikkis afford students the opportunity to not only read internet material, but to create, or edit it to make it better.
An obvious risk of any open author generated internet site is the possibility of vandalism or inaccurately posted material. Ironically, this risk can be a potentially positive learning vehicle by strengthening the critical reading, thinking, and writing skills of the student.
Well stated, Lori. I think I like the idea of a collaborative wiki project with my students. I haven't looked much, but peanut butter wikis seems like an easy tool to use for educators. What if groups created research categories based on a novel in English, made review wikis for math, experiment wikis in science and historical wikis in social studies.
Better yet, what if social studies students collaborated with English students on a wiki based on historical literature? Mockingbird? Julius Caesar? The Odyssey?
The options for cross-curricular work are numerous if you can get organized.
Think about the evolution of these collaborative student roles:
1. Students as researchers and
organizers
2. Students as writers
3. Students as content editors
(images, links, video, audio)
4. Students as copy editors
5. Students as publishers
I forgot about the Newark Valley comment:
Parks, Eateries, Shopping, Historic Sites, Schools, and Churches seem like good additions to the Wikipedia entry. Others? Fire Department? Post Office? We'll have to narrow options down to something managable. I'm sure you all have ideas as well.
test
Post a Comment