I must admit that I've always been intrigued with using blogs and wiki's in my classroom.
In particular, I've wanted to use a blog to expose students new and interesting science stories. A few years ago, I stumbled upon a blog that one teacher had set up and found it interesting. My biggest concern was how to ensure student safety. After making sure settings on the sites were appropriate, I found that all required email addresses. At the time, our students did not a have a school/district email address and I was reluctant to require them to sign up for another one. This changed in the last year, so now all our students have a district email. I really do think that blogs can be quite useful for students. In particular, it can get them reading and thinking critically about science. I also find now that the ability to embed videos (like TED) can introduce a whole new way for students to think critically.
Wiki's are a newer thought for me (although they've been around a lot longer than I had thought according to the article.) Many years ago, I attempted a web page. The page started as a project in a workshop, and I had hoped to use it fully in my classroom. After some time, I found updating the page cumbersome, and students were not using the resources. The main problem was that the information was one way, I posted the content, then the students accessed it. Wiki's may change some of this. Because using a wiki is a collaborative process, it has the potential of engaging students. This hopefully would encourage them to be more active in the learning process.
I'm actually very excited to try out some wiki's this week and see what other teachers have been doing with these tools.
I've been toying around with the idea of having my students regularly post key points from their learning on a class wiki. It seems that if you are going to go through the process of creating a wiki, then you should use it for collaboration, otherwise it is just a glorified website. My experience with kids is that they love to put stuff on the web and the wiki seems like a good, safe, and controlled way to do this.
ReplyDeleteThat was a direction I was actually considering. I really want the students to be involved in the process. I have a small advanced biology class this year, and for many of the topics, they could each contribute key points.
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