5-D-1 Wikis in Your Classroom
October 20, 2007
This week we worked on learning about and developing wikis. Because I would like to do away with my writing textbook and thought wikis might help me with that goal, I went to Wikibooks Main Page. There I found two sites that demonstrated some of what can be done with a wiki. One has many ESL lesson plans, Lesson Plans, and the other is very similar to a grammar text book, Grammar. Both of these sites gave me some ideas, while at the same time made me want to jump right in and start “collaborating.” That will come later, but right now Deb and I are working on our wiki project, Deb and Patricia on Using Blogs in the Classroom.
The project has been a good learning tool. Since Deb is a great partner, the main challenge has been on the technology side. Learning how to use the tool (editing, format, adding a page, linking the page) seems to take me a long time. (My nephew laughs when he hears that “bonk” sound which means that something strange happened!) The second challenge involves the massive amount of information, sifting through it, and choosing what to include. Once my del.icio.us page develops and becomes more organized, this will improve.
My view of wikis has changed. Most importantly, I now know what they are, but I also have a beginner’s understanding of what they can be and that is pretty amazing. I don’t have any resistance to using wikis. The college where I work is very supportive of using technology, so the only resistance I can anticipate is on the user side. In order to use the Web 2.0 instead of my writing textbook I am now wondering what type of support my students will need. Is it reasonable to expect them to access the Internet instead of a paper textbook? I don’t want to make the class online, but in order to use the Web instead of a paper textbook, will the class need to be labeled a blended class? These are questions I will need to ask my dean and the technology people at school.
One Response to “5-D-1 Wikis in Your Classroom”
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October 22nd, 2007 at 11:48 am
Patricia, I admire your intention to create online resources (textbook?) for your students. I would sincerely love to do this with my students. I hate to make them buy so many books (actually, not my choice.) In fact, they do ultimately create their own online resource on a wiki. Not as fabulously as I would do it for them, of course!
But, that’s not the point.
You ask a great question – does the “text” being online mean it is a blended class?
I have been bringing more and more of my F2F class activities to the online environment – very stealthly. I have to keep in mind their ability access computers. Although at the college level they pay for access – the college has campuses all over town and computers all over every campus – I don’t want to make it an unnecessary burden. However, I do want them to learn to communicate “online.” I see this as one of the venues they need to have command of their writing skills – and that’s my job. I consider it an assumed responsibiltiy.
I don’t know how your school will see it. I haven’t really asked – just quietly let the right people know what I’m doing so as not to draw attention, but to cover my hind end.
Just sharin’
Lee Anne