Consider the Wiki

This past week has gone by in a whirlwind!  While I have been a Wikipedia user for a while, and had a passing understanding of what a wiki was and even how it worked, I've never integrated them into my practice.  Once again,  I find myself on the brink of applying what I believe to be a revolutionary new technology to my professional life.

I sit on various committees at my school, all broken into sub-committees.  Information is all passed via e-mail along the line, until it eventually gets to the poor principal, whose inbox is perpetually bulging.  I suggested using a wiki to offset the burden of organizing all of that information from one person to the entire group.  Balanced and equitable.  I hope my principal loves it.

In the classroom with my students, I'm beginning to think about using wikis too.  I've begun to rollout the 5th grade environmental project I blogged about earlier, and have students working in teams of 4.  I'm thinking of setting up a wiki for them to hold their collected knowledge on the various topics I've assigned each group.  I think it will be new and exciting for them - and possibly a little frustrating.  But the collaborative paradigm is one I would like to introduce them to early, to build on in future years.
Actually contributing to a wiki with a group myself this past week has been informative too.  It's highlighted some of the possible pitfalls I should be aware of for my young students, including:

• Time Management: if one team member is holding up the rest due to a lack of participation, the whole project suffers.
  
  
• Inventing an organizational structure out of nothing was a bit of a challenge for me.  I imagine that they will also struggle with how to order their thoughts and research.  they will need some pointers on this.
  
  
• This isn't one I felt personally, but I suspect that it will rear up for my students: a sense of possessiveness or individual ownership.  Or maybe it will be a sense of indignation that  some contribute more than others, or contribute more thoughtful and substantive content than others.  I will need to learn how to assess the various products produced, but I'm not quite sure how yet.

I'd like to mention a word about Wikipedia.  I've always been a fan, and have thought that it's detractors were old sticks-in-the-mud.  Reading about Wikipedia and exploring the safeguards that have been recently put in place make me all the more excited.  I'll confess that I'm in a bit of disagreement with the school librarian on this!  I don't believe that Wikipedia can be used blindly or uncritically, but to ban it's use outright seems like throwing the baby out with the bath-water.  I feel compelled to expose my student to this tool in a structured and supervised way; rather than have them encounter and interact with it in their own time, unsupervised, unguided, and likely less critical.

Globally Connected; Finding Answers

After a little digging, I found answers to some of the questions I had:

1. Question: Where to find blogs specifically from other places around the planet?
2. Question: Do I pre-screen the blog for age-appropriate content?

• Answer: http://comments4kids.wikispaces.com/ - A wiki established to post links to kid-created content worth commenting on.

Details of the origins of #Comments4Kids from Twitter conversations between a group of like-minded educators can be found at:

• http://attheteachersdesk.blogspot.com/2009/04/comments4kids-wednesdays.html?showComment=1254015322109#c4730878677880691336 - 

The question of assessing my student's posts is still an open one...

Globally Connected

I’ve been thinking about ways I can incorporate blogging into some of my student’s lessons, and came across what I thought was a great example. 

• http://mrcsclassblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/dear-kaia-voicethread-and-video.html
• http://mrcsclassblog.blogspot.com/

Mr. C teaches at Noel Elementary, and holds a session called ‘Comments4Kids’ once a week, where his students:

 “…have the privilege of reading blog posts from around the world and leaving comments.”

For instance on one day, his students looked at blog posts from both Qatar and Iowa.

I thought this was an excellent introduction to blogging, in that it permitted students to interact, collaborate, and publish with their peers, and encouraged cultural understandings and a global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures. 

I’d love to incorporate this type of lesson into some work I do with my 4^th graders, who currently are at work on a long term project titled “Globally Connected”, in which they look at similarities and differences between their lives growing up in the U.S., and the lives of same-age students in other countries. 

I do have some questions about implementation, however.  In particular:

• Where to find blogs specifically from other places around the planet?
• Do I pre-screen the blog for age-appropriate content?
• How to assess my students’ posts?