Being There
Posted February 6th, 2008 by alexanderhayes
[4:03:30 PM] Alexander Hayes says: http://www.dekita.org/smielt/08/2/4/guest-speaker-week-4
[4:05:17 PM] Stephan Ridgway says: what time sydney?
[4:05:52 PM] Alexander Hayes says: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=6&month=2&year=…
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Thank you, Alex for forwarding the invite to the Australian network. Wayne Macintosh will be speaking tonight about development of open content for e-learning on Wikieducator.
In this forum, we will be also brainstorming and discussing how to make best use of wikis in:
Your invaluable experience is very welcome.
Take a look at how a teacher plans to incorporate wikis in his classroom.
Any ideas or suggestions for this teacher?
Jennifer
I’ve read Gragham’s post, I’d like him to be my coordinator.
I feel we, teachers using technology, have to deal with two different
kinds of problems. One is the other teachers, in my case the English
Department coordinators and school authorities and the other is our
students.
My coordinators didn’t pay attention to what I was doing last year.
They didn’t even answer my emails. They just said "how good". They
didn’t visit the blogs or the wikis. I could have been posting porn for
my students and nobody would have noticed. What did I do? I ignored
them, just as they did with me. And I concentrated on my students.
I couldn’t do much. I don’t have access to computers at school, the lab
is there for another subject, Computer Science, not English. As I had
decided to ignore all that, my students worked from home. In the
institute i had access to a "computer lab" with 3, usually two
computers; but there I could use a projector (not always available)
I had two experiences with wikis.
A collaborative writing (with my language institute students), which
was a great experience, they had a lot of fun and led us to discuss
interesting topics such as privacy or how to be true to your own ideas
and at the same time respect your partners’ work.
This group was also blogging , they shared the blog with a group from
school. One of the girls (a very enthusiastic one, 12 years old) had
read a simplified version of spiderman, she wanted to post a summery in
the blog; I told her that wouldn’t be an interesting blog post and
suggested she opened a wiki page and wrote the summery there; she wrote
a blog post and linked to the wiki page. I showed her where the wiki
stats were and she checked them regularly. She did extra work and was
so happy about that. You may think, well, this is one student out of
nine, but she had her chance and her language competence went up
amazingly.
I also used the wiki with this group to take some notes for a Spring institutional project, I saved a lot of time doing this.
I’ll write about the other experience later.
http://takingitfurther.wikispaces.com/
I’m still feeling less enthusiastic than I’d hoped about using wikis with my classes. I’ve been searching around for sucessful examples and the best I’ve found is Corpus set up by Claudia Ceraso. Even there you sense the struggle she has had in keeping her students involved. And the blog post by Grahan Wegner giving an account of a personal experience rings horribly true. Maybe someone else has found some more positive experiences?
Thanks, Gabriela for your comment: I had a look at your wiki and it looked interesting. In the end , what was the most useful experience for your students, the blog or the wiki?
I absolutely agree with what Graham says at the end of his post:
How can they (teachers) be totally committed to creating a unique learning
opportunity for their students if they themselves haven’t invested some
virtual blood, sweat and tears?
So, why don’t we open a wiki and start sweating?
At the end of this forum topic we’ve discussed a possible wiki project (misplaced, perhaps, but spontaneous). more ideas?
I’ve only used wikispaces, I wouldn’t mind trying PBwiki. What do you prefer?
We could use it to work on a concrete project, comment and linking
interesting experiences, posts etc, summerise discussions on this
forum,…
What do you thinK?
Blogs and wikis are so different. I wrote about that, but in Spanish.
Blogs are more personal, and open, so they are great for students to connect with people outside the classroom and use their English meaningfully.
Not all the students like being personal online, but the ones who get engaged start reading thingsthat are beyond their level (writings you would never dare to bring to theclass) and writing comments and using their English to communicate. Of course some profit more than others, but that always happens.
I see wikis as notebooks which can shared and written in collaboration. So they are great for improving writing skills and for providing a sense of community.
The history pages are great. If you have assigned a group work you can see individual contributions.
Editing a wiki is easier than editing a blog. Wikis don’t have ornaments. They are all content.
So, in the end, I think I haven’t answered your question.
Right. Have taken up Gabriela’s suggestion and formed a wiki for us to colloborate on: http://smielt.pbwiki.com/FrontPage
The invite key is: collaborative
Hello Ann and Gabriela,
I have used both blogs and wikis with my EFL high school students and all depends on what the goal is. This is why it is important to know the affordances (opportunities and constraints) provided by each tool.
As you mention, Gabriela and as it is being discussed in the blogging forum, blogs are usually the expression of an individual voice which engages in dialogue with others who comment on a particular post or refer to (pingbacking/trackbacking) the original source.
I view wikis as a white sheet of digital paper you and others can edit (the same text or separate ones) on the fly.
I have used them for presentations like the Tesol Colloquium and Braz-Tesol (different people have added their information themselves without me having to ask them for it) so the same applies for students who have to work in collaboration to present on a topic. As Gabriela mentions, you can check the history page to view the process and contributions. I have used them for collaborative writing in articles as well and so can the students.
Although the examples that follow are mostly teacher-centric, they illustrate how easily you can add page after page and organize them progressively until you have a booklet. I have used them as benchmarks or instruction page (not collaborative but easy to edit and evaluate progress). As an explanation and timeline for projects and central point for different groups to converge to.
Check some examples of High School Collaborative Writing here.
Hi Ann,
A place for collaboration was set up for the wiki group on the SMiELT site. Rudolf and Illya should be able to provide you with the pages you need and explain how it works.
However, if you prefer to use the pbwiki you opened for collaborative work with Gabriella only, just mention it here and add your URL so others can see what you are doing.
(sorry Rudolf) I don’t see the wiki here as a real wiki, perhaps it is and I just don’t see it.; and I think it’s useful to learn about a tool actually using that tool.
Hi Ann,
Thanks for taking the initiative and opening the pbwiki. I was thinking along the same lines, so you beat me to it :-).
I’d like to mention another difference between wikis and blogs that will be a factor in deciding which tool is the best. While blogs scroll down as you write, making past posts exactly that, wikis remain as separate pages at the same level, or with ‘children’ of their own, keeping the relevancy of the present.
Illya (smielt team)
The URL for the wiki is http://smielt.pbwiki.com/ and it’s great to see that people are already contributing to it!
There’s a page to start collaborative work.
Ann, thanks for opening a pbwiki. I tend to use the same tools, so I have to be pushed to try new things.
To those who have used both pbwiki and wikispaces, which one is easier to edit? Though the layout is quite different, I think the possibilities are the same and both are easy to edit; or am I missing something?
Before I actually set up and worked with a wiki, Itried both pbwiki and wikispaces. They both seemed confusing to me. I found wikidot and it all started to make sense. I have never really figured out if it was the wiki or me, but I have stuck with wikidot and never regretted it.
Nancy, I’ve just seen that you have set up some webquests. Some in a webquest site and others in a wiki. Maybe wikidot, which I had never seen. Which one did you prefer? The webquest site or the wiki?
To keep the discussion here, I’ve copied a question Karen had over at the wiki:
Good observation. Would this possibly be a question that should be on a survey about technology?
Please feel free to add examples of wikis to the growing list: http://smielt.pbwiki.com/
maybe with mention of whether it is more learner or teacher content.
Illya (smielt team)
Gabriela, the WebQuest site was important the first time I did one. That was during an EVO session on WebQuests a couple years ago. I needed the structure to help me be sure not to leave anything out. I found abouther place to do WebQuests and did another one there. After that, though, I found that it was easier to do it on a wiki because I felt I had more control over it. Even though the wiki is not "mine" in the sense that the site could disappear, I control everything else.
Another advantage to the wiki site is that you can have students do their work on the same site. When I did the first WebQuest on Thomas Merton, they went to the WebQuest site to get the task, but their final work was done on what was then Writely and now is Google Docs. When we did the later quests on the wiki, everything (task and product) was in the same place. It made it easier for me, I know.
In reply to Karen’s question, I think it really depends on he assignment or why they are working on the wiki. In my case, the wiki was set up for students to publish their individual work and to make it easier for them to share resources and information. Also, it was their first exposure to a wiki. If I had students with wiki experience, I could see them setting their own wiki up as a truly collaborative space, but mine would not have been able to do that. I think that we have to gradually teach them to use the tools, to see the possibilities before we ask them to do it for themselves by themselves.
I had this policy: I didn’t write in the students’ pages. I used the discussion page for that. But I used other pages for the assigments, help,etc. I even locked those ones. Now I wonder if you can lock pages in pbwiki…
Nancy, thanks for the explanation. Very clear.
How do we log in to this wiki? http://smielt.pbwiki.com/
First I opened an account, but I’m not sure if it was necessary to do that beforehand.
Then you need the invite key: collaborative
Tahnk you Gabriela. The key was what I needed to know. I am already registered to PBwiki.
I was wondering why the lists on the pbwiki cannot be compiled in the same way in the SMiELT collaboration space.
What makes of pbwiki a better platform for this?
In the "ideas for the classroom" page?
Ideas for the classroom or any other page you’d like to open to add to the Wiki Collab.
The thing is I cannot figure how to add a page. Ah I’ve got an idea. I’ll try right now.
No, it didn’t work
Gabriela
I think it’s not possible for you to add to these pages. You can try on the wiki, which was actually set up for this purpose.
Illya (smielt team)
You can post and add to these pages just like you do in the forum. If you need extra pages under the wiki category, just ask the site moderators and they will open them for you. This is the main difference between the SMiELT wiki and the pbwiki, where any participant can open or add a new page.
I believe Rudolf has unticked the permission for participants to add new SMiELT wiki pages for fear they might place them all over the site and confuse the others. However, nothing prevents you from asking him to open a new page when you need one. I have opened an extra page in case you need it. Add it as a child to Wiki collab or as a child to Ideas for the classroom if you have a particular lesson plan, for instance.
ok. I copied them in "ideas.." but I thought it didn’t match. I’ll talk to Rudolf.
I’ve made an informal short presentation on my experience with wikis, specially dedicated to all of you. http://tinyurl.com/26kq5x
I have opened a presentation on wikis page and have already added it. If you want to add voice to the presentation, you could always use the slides with VoiceThread or add an Audacity mp3 file.