Google Docs, Google Sites or Wikispaces?

I'm always trying to decide what is the right tool for the job. If it's a one-time thing that's just about writing,  probably a doc for each group or even the whole class is enough. But if there will be files or media posted, or if there will be multiple projects, then I go back and forth between Sites and Wikispaces.

I did not use Wikispaces at all last year because our school has gone over to Google apps in a major way, so I thought I would be consistent. But W. does have their project feature, after all, and as I have discovered, even a category expressly aimed at the classroom. Here's what got me to experiment again this year, with one of my classes: the "assessment" feature. A graph can show for each student how much she has been engaged on the wiki. I'm not sure if that will save me from tedious searches of students' posts, but I want to find out.

It seems that in Wikispaces I can't give regular pages a hierarchy, though maybe I'm missing something. In Sites when I create a page I can always choose to nest it under a previously created page. Also, when I tried forming teams in the projects section, the editing was acting weird and it was time consuming; I hope that was a fluke.

Today JP groups will start posting research results. The experiment begins.

Progress

I felt like the projects weren't going anywhere, and that more face time was needed. So today was a "project day," and groups for the most part were able to formulate challenges and give themselves a direction. I enjoyed our discussions as I consulted with each group and tried to guide. I'm not sure whether or not I should have encouraged "bigger" thinking. But they had some worthwhile goals, and the time frame is limited. Now to see what kind of research they do and what solutions they will devise.

And most of all, now to see if the process has been jumpstarted enough to take off. The groups need to start accomplishing some things outside of class, and I hope that now they will have enough to go on.

About the Justice and Peace projects

I've nearly finished going over all the projects, and can see already things I want to change for next year. Some things I did like. One little piece of outside-the-box thinking (at least, outside the classroom, outside the state!) was the inclusion of a video chat with someone in Washington D.C. The video gives added interest to the students' wiki page.

Another student who with her partner researched world hunger, discussed (through e-mail?) poverty in Pakistan with her grandfather who is a lawyer there. It was wonderful to see how animated she was in telling the class about things she had learned about a country dear to her heart. Another wrote to Michael Nacht, an expert on national security, for his views on terrorism. That's what I'm talkin' about... learning can go beyond the textbook and beyond the classroom walls now.

I need to work more with students with how to go about crediting sources for specific information and for photos. They also need to do more analysis with the information they uncover. But it was a good start, I think.

M-Hub

This afternoon I attended a meeting about M-Hub (M for Mercy H.S.) This is not my brainchild, but that of one of my very techy colleagues. Nevertheless, worth mentioning in my notes here, because it's pretty exciting stuff, and I believe will affect my teaching in the future. M-Hub will be a database of alums, former teachers, and maybe other connections -- people with expertise in various fields that will be open to sharing their knowledge with students.

Right now my students working on their Justice and Peace projects are asked to find an "expert" in the area they are researching and conduct an interview in some form, even by e-mail. Some may have had connections, one or two asked me for help, and others did "cold calls" or perhaps e-mails to related organizations. In the future, they will be able to consult a database of people already primed to share their expertise.

Larry's got a group of sophomores already hard at work getting this off the ground. They will be the leaders of a student club next year that will continue the effort.

Looking ahead

Next semester I want to focus on making some connections outside the classroom. I'm not sure yet how I will go about it! In Catholic Theology, the chapter on "church" seems ripe for that, and maybe for a project of some kind.

In Peace and Justice (new prep), I want to do that for sure. What better way to get up-to-date information on the issues we will cover than through the internet and through people to whom my students can connect through the internet? That's the class where I plan to launch into student blogging in some way, too, though my plans are modest.