Beginning to use Wikis with Students

Hi!  I played with using a wiki with my students this year.  One project that I set up was for the students to work in small groups to build a wiki on the French Revolution, with each group taking a different perspective.  This started out well enough, but we ran into issues when our time with the computers was interrupted due to something I cannot recall now (snow day maybe?) and then I couldn't sign out the computers again for a couple of weeks, with a vacation in the middle.  By then, the students were done thinking about that unit.

The second activity was with a class that was videoconferencing with another class in another school in the state.  My students posted their research work on the wiki for the other students to view and comment on, while the other class posted the allegories they wrote based on the historical research my students had conducted. 

I found that once the students got logged in, they pretty much took off on their own with the work.  They have a tendancy to comment at first, rather than edit the page -- there is a certain amount of timidity there I think.  They also needed to get just posting comments to each other out of their system.  (Being allowed to participate in a collaborative environment online instead of being told they can't was appealing to them!) Once they settled in to work, the students who tend to be tech savy leapt into editing the pages, creating new pages and linking them, etc.  The others worked more on research. 

I'm looking forward to having a more effective system in place for the start of next year so that students are producing pages for notes/questions from class and help each other learn and reinforce ideas that way, as well as conduct research projects, etc. Also, from looking at this week's hw (high school), I found that I can easily post updates to hw/class activities, which I want to be more efficient with.

The technology I have access to at school is pretty limited.  I teach in a Catholic School, and we aren't a particularly affluent one!  :-)

If I have students do some journaling and/or poetry composition but they don't have access at home to the internet, how long should I probably allow them in school?  I'm thinking I'll have to schedule time in the computer lab to do this type of stuff. 

ally327md,
I had a wiki last year. I had similar problems of the students not having access to computers outside of school. I have two things to say to that. One, yes they do. The students can find places to get online, library, friends, etc. Second, give them an hour every other week in class. Schedule a lab or something at least twice a month. Once they learn how to log in, it will go much faster. Good Luck.

This past year I experimented with a wiki with my high school class and my daughter's fifth grade class.  Her teacher wanted to teach the students the importance of editing their essays.  We set up individual wikis for each student and gave my students access to all of them.  The fifth graders typed up their essays (which took them a while) and my students would go into their wiki and edit their essays and give them suggestions.  Both groups of students loved this!

rita-buhite
This sounds like a great idea.  I am working on a way to do it in the class with students helping to edit each other's work.  What criteria did you set for the editors?  My students are willing to take suggestions but not give up creative control?

This is an amazing platform to share, express and learn about web 2 education techniques. I am really lucky to be part of this knowledge process. Thanks

I am in Saudi Arabia and disucssing using a Wiki to link my post-secondary writing class with a freshman writing class in the US or Canada. Has anyone had any experince with this kind of international collaboration among students.

Mark

I am really new to this pbwiki stuff.  I don't have a lot of computer knowledge myself, so I feel like a blind person stumbling down a very rocky path.  Complicating my learning curve are these facts: the students I teach are beginner English language learners, they typically have no keyboarding skills, 90% of them do not have computers in the home, and we don't have daily access to computers in our class.  (I can probably count on having 1-2x access in class.)   Is my situation hopeless?  I am very eager to learn more about pbwikis and think they'd be very motivating for my students--both to learn English and to learn computer skills.  I just don't know where to start with these kids (and barely know where to start with my own lack of computer knowledge!) with so few language and computer skills.  Anyone have some advice?

I am new to doing wikis.  I teach computers to two classes each of K-8.  That's close to 600 students.  Would each one of them have to register to use my wiki?

Is there another way to just register a class?   Don't know enough yet to know if this was a stupid or naive question.

Thanks.

annetec2
Just jump in! Look for resources like parents, other students, local library etc.  Talk to everyone about what you want to do. It is amazing how many people are willing to give you small bits of information.  I am a beginner also and it takes time but all the little steps add up.  If you are a MAC user my class and I recently found a great resource in our local Apple store.  My class and I did a two year fundraising project to buy a computer for our classroom.  How old are your students?

How was setting up access managed?  I know that user names and passwords can be generated for students who don't have or want to get e-mails, but managing those passwords (the inevitable loss of passwords) seems like A LOT of work.  Is there another way to manage this?

I have the same exact ?.  How to deal with getting so many students on the wiki.

I use Gaggle.net for my emails.  That way there is a measure of control over what they write to each other.  PLus it is supported by my school  so there are links on the school website AND the children only have one password to remember.  This helps them do that. 

Does anyone have experience with replacing paper/notebook reflective journaling by their students with  wiki reflective journaling?

Thank you for posting these links - they look promising!:
 PBWorks Educator Portal  and 12 Ways to Get Students Involved in Your Workspace.

     
     I've wanted to use a wiki with at least some of my students, but teaching computers to grades 1 through 8, I just wasn't sure how to get started. I think it would be easier if I taught Language Arts or Social Studies as it could be based on the book we're reading or the time in history we're studying.  I really like the camp so far, though it's taken me some time to find my way around.  Answering the questions about other's wikis makes it easier for me to see how I can use it and what I can do. This coming year I am going to be teaching grades 1-5, and I am going to work on a site during this camp. I hope to have some thing to show or link to my camp wiki. I also like all the guidelines (rules) that teachers have posted on their wikis, as it addresses some of my concerns of misuse.  I also have the question of how to easily have students access a wiki without having to manage e-mail addresses and passwords. I dealt with students having a password to log onto the school's network and some kids just couldn't remember their passwords. Hopefully I'll have that figured out soon, as I'm not sure that my school will allow Gaggle accounts. (I know that we blocked e-mail access for students at my last two schools.)

I wonder if anyone has experience with 1-to-1.  What kinds of issues do you have when all the students have computers?

I had my students contribute to a collaborative science fiction story on a wiki page.  I started the story and showed it in class, and invited them to add to the story.  One student did, but the rest seemed intimidated with writing.  I kept reminding them to contribute, and told them it could be anything, even aliens landing in downtown New York.  A few students started adding to the story, and it got more fun as they added their own zany ideas.  Some entries were silly, and those edits got chopped out by other students that wanted to keep the story believable.  I was pleased with the outcome, but I realized how hard it is to get a wiki project going.  It is like advertizing: you have to remind them multiple times, and finally it gets through.  Once the wiki reaches a certain level of activity, it seems to take off with momentum of its own.

Students w/o e-mail addresses:  I have had fairly good success in using PBWORKS to create student accounts for particular classes.  I use the students first names as their usernames.  The passwords are kind of silly, but therefore fairly memorizable.  I do keep a class list of passwords with each class's folder, since at least one student a class forgets their password.