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.

JP tech notes

The Justice and Peace course was new for me last year, and it's also very much about current topics; those are maybe the reasons why it's the course in which I most used "technology." But it was a little overwhelming for some at times. I think that will ease up in the future as students come having had practice with blogs and wikis in other courses. But I'm seeing if I can't somehow simplify things. Once complaint was that the students had so many places to go online that they didn't know what was what.

I'm moving away from Moodle a bit in that course. Maybe I can drop it for the most part. I had to move the wiki group assignments to Wikispaces because I have two sections glommed into one Moodle course, and it would be too time-consuming to form the groups manually. Auto-creating groups would mean students from different sections would be together.

Last semester I posted assignments on Moodle that were for the blog. Today, I thought, why not post the directions right on the blog? Duh. Maybe this will help with some of that feeling of confusion.

More about the project

Part of the problem with the final project seemed to be a lack of direction. "What are we supposed to do?" one of our school's straight-A students wanted to know. I had given some requirements regarding the research part, but not too much about what the wiki was to look like. I had suggested text, links, photos, video, but basically had told them to use their imagination about what to include to present their topic. "Think of the wiki as a canvas," I said. If this were the final project of an art class, I wouldn't tell them what to draw.

So, I tried to go back and add some guidelines about what I would be looking for. I still wouldn't tell them exactly what to put on their wiki. I have to admit, I am sort of muddling through this. More research needed, but that probably won't happen until the summer!

During a work day recently, I saw one pair sorting through a pile of papers that turned out to be a survey they had done in a sibling's middle school relating to their topic of violence in schools. A great idea! And totally their own.

More feedback

I did a Moodle survey about technology in my Justice and Peace class, where tech abounds, and I had a sense that at least some students were getting either frustrated or overwhelmed. And it's true, some were, although there were positive responses as well. The tipping point seemed to be when I assigned the final project to be done on Wikispaces. One more thing to learn! Diigo frustrated some also. In order to cut back on tech I announced that we could drop the blog we had been keeping. There was a bit of an uproar. "Not the blog!" It seems that some of the students liked that very much, writing what would have been assignments anyway in this medium where they could read what one another had written.

The blog has not entirely met expectations. I'm not sure how much they really read unless required. And I haven't pressed for a wider audience. But if some of my students see value in it, that will stay.

As for the final project, someone pleaded, "can't we just do PowerPoint?" I ended up making that concession, allowing for the alternative of PowerPoint plus a paper (because the PowerPoint, I have insisted, is not going to have a lot of text, so the information has to go somewhere for me to read it) instead of the wiki. Now, PowerPoint  -- that is something they are comfortable with.

Staff in-service

Thought my colleague Larry did a great job planning and presenting. He presents other places, too, and preps all that in addition to his classes. Amazing.

I'm sure some folks are overwhelmed by all the information. I am to a certain extent myself, even though I was familiar with much of what was shown. Being familiar is not the same as making use of the full potential of something. And some things Larry talked about I haven't touched yet. There is so much out there.

I hope that staff members don't feel they have to immediately do everything. Pick something that looks interesting or useful, and explore.

And, if we started to utilize just one of the tools presented today to communicate more within the building, that alone would make the day a success, I think.