The wiki

Just spent a couple of minutes catching up on some discussions on our staff wiki. We've had wiki's before, but now the time seems ripe; a few staff members have started to connect. It will be a place to see reports of conversations that have taken place in departments, especially about our CBL challenge, in lieu of e-mailed minutes. We are going to be a little less isolated this year, it seems to me. And our department is continuing a discussion that started at our meeting today, so hopefully we will make more progress than we could just waiting for our next face-to-face meeting.

Review wiki

Yesterday and today we used Wikispaces for a review. I put the study guide, basically a list of topics or points, on a separate page for each chapter and for each essay topic, and let students sign up for pages to work on. The plan was to have a thorough document to study from, and also for them to engage with the material and ask me questions as they went.

It was partially successful. There was a problem when too many students tried to sign up for the same topic, so I have to have a better system for that. I had to go through the wiki to make sure the information was accurate, but it was not too time-consuming. I tried to send out invites to have all students join the wiki so that I could keep track of individual contributions. But many did not get the invite and I ended up just making it public so that we could get going on it.

Some girls had already worked on the guide, so they completed their information quickly today. Some had to be nudged to be productive. But most did their part.

We'll see how they do on the exam...

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.

Wikispaces

Justice and Peace students will be presenting information they gather for their final project on the pages of a wiki that I have just created. I've just done the explanatory home page, and though I had some trouble with the photo files, I got it done at last. I made an 18-second video just to show students that video can be included, and I made a sample link as well.

The video is made with my web cam and seems not too sharply focused. I've been reading the blog of a colleague who complains about poor production quality in some of his students' videos. I won't be expecting more of my students than I do of myself. Well, neither does my colleague, but he's much more practiced and perhaps uses better equipment.

It's a learning process for us all.

The lovely podcasts

A second semester go-around with this assignment. A little smoother, with some ideas for making it even better next time. Just now I was reviewing earlier posts on this and saw a comment from TeacherLady about using Moodle wikis with groups. I'll ponder that. I do like Moodle wiki groups, at least so far for in-class activities.

At one point I was feeling ready to throw in the towel and go back to the written form of the assignment. But I do like the recordings; I think they bring the content to life.

Speaking of Moodle, I'm using the "feedback" feature to do a quick survey about the assignment with my students.

Second Semester

Second semester: I plan to keep the same basic process for Catholic Theology, though I may change it for next year.

In Justice and Peace, I want to get students connected to what is happening outside the classroom. I think I would like to introduce them to RSS, and help them find relevant blogs or other feeds.

They will blog. One class blog, or individual? More research to be done.

Their final project will be done in pairs or groups, and will be presented through a wiki. Google Sites? Wikispaces? I have to explore more there to decide.

Oh, and I have to read the text and figure out how we will go about learning the content of the course, too.

I will be busy.

What's a wiki?

Of about 50 students in two predominantly senior classes (the ones who have carried laptops around for about three and a half years), I would say that about ten raised their hands when I asked who knew what a wiki is.