Hello everyone!
I will tell you about a website that I really like and the site motivates students to engage in their work in school. The website is called wikispaces.com and is one of many sites where you can make your own wiki-page.
A wiki is almost like a blog and is placed on the internet. This means that anyone can read it such as classmates, parents or other teachers. The only thing you need is the address to the page.
The good thing is that the administrator of the page can accept members to the wiki and this means that only the members can write on the page. To show you how to do this I will use a wiki that Mikael Löfwall used (a student at Linnéuniversitetet) at his teaching practice in social education (The screenshots is in Swedish but I will give an explanation to each picture).
I will tell you step by step, on how you can start, by giving an example:
Sarah is a teacher at a primary school in Sweden and teaches in 5th grade. Each student got a laptop that they borrow from the school to use during the lessons and at home. She just found out about wikispaces.com from a colleague and wants to make a page for her English class in order to let them use ICT tools (in this case a computer) and want them to get better at writing. Sarah gets help from her colleague John and he shows her how to make a wiki-page step by step:
1. The first thing that they do is that he shows her the webpage www.wikispaces.com.
1. She registers and creates a page. She now becomes the administrator of this page. As an administrator she decides if the assignments should be individual (a student cannot change what another student has written) or collaborative (students can make changes of what another student have written). In this example the students will do the assignments individually.
2. She makes the layout of the entrance page that will welcome the students to the wiki. She also put up different categories like assignments, homework, movies and pictures to organize the page and make it easier to find.
4. At the next lesson she asks the student to visit wikispaces.com and to make a request to become a member.
5. Sarah then accepts all the requests and each student becomes authors on the page.
6. The next step is to show the students how wiki works and to do this Sarah asked them to write an introduction about themselves so that they could learn all the features.
7. When the students have done this they knows how every feature works and they goes to the link named “assignments”. There they find all the assignments that Sarah has prepared before the lesson to do during the lesson.
8. She also gives them homework to do at home on the link named Homework. Here they find all the homework that she wants them to do and this is a great because they would never miss homework unless they forget the computer at school.
9. She can also see what and when a student has written something by clicking on “history”.
One way that you can use the wiki is through problem based learning. This means that you come up with a problem for the students to solve individually or in groups. This gives an opportunity to mix two subjects together like English and social education, so that they could learn both about social education and to use the English language while doing it.
The response from students and from teachers that have used wiki is that it is an exciting, motivating and is a fun way to work. The parents also have the chance to be a part of their child’s education.
So I hope that I have given you some insight on what a wiki could be and look like, and how you could use it in your teaching.
/ Louise Rönnér
Hi Louise
ReplyDeleteYou have written a very good description about your ICT resource. I liked that you told us how the page worked through two fictional people. You have made it almost like a little story that is easy to comprehend and understand.
I have never heard about www.wikispace.com and I barely knew what wikis was. After reading your post I am interested in testing it with my future students. Now I understand that wikis is almost the same as a blog and as I have my own blog and know that many students in the older ages have their own blogs, why not start a “school blog” and let the students write in English?
I think it is a good thing that the administrator can keep the page in order so that the students cannot write anything that can hurt someone. One problem with the use of the Internet is that you can be anonymous and then write things which you would never have written if you were not anonymous. Therefore I think it is important that the teacher is active on the page so that he or she knows what is going on there.
It is also good that the parents can be involved in the students’ education and if they want to know what they are working with, for example in the subject English, they can only go into the page and look what has been done. They can also see what their own child has written.
The only concern I have about the page is how much time it takes to create the page. And to use this resource the students need to have access to a computer. If you put out the homework and other important information it is also important to make sure that all students have access to a computer at home.
Thank you for a good explanation of your ICT resource :)
//Susanne Burman
Nice work Louise!
ReplyDeleteYou have written a very good explaination about your recourse. I have actually never heard of Wikispaces so this was really interesting to read! If i get it right it is like a blogg but with more options than just writing. I like the fact that you wrote that parent, students and teachers can see the page if they just got the adress, then the teacher and the class can choose who they give out the adress to. But that the parents can see what their children are doing is terific! So they can follow their child in his or her development and not just see the results in the end of the semester. In that way they can by them self see problems that their child might have and they can work with it right away, both at home and in school. I have discoverd that for som parents it is hard so believe in everything the teacher tells you. So some parents want proof and evidence that strengthens what the teacher said. And this is a great way to give them that!
When I first read what you wrote I thought that this might not be something for the younger students since it can be tricky to navigate on the internet or on websites like this one. But when I thought about it again, the students that I met theese five weeks knew so much about computers and the internet so they would have managed this easy! So I change my mind, I think that the small children can do this aswell. Maybe not the first grade student, but from the second grade and up. Really interesting how much they know about these things when they are so small!
I liked what you wrote about that several subjects can be involved in this. That you can mix different subjects. That can usually be a tricky thing to do, it is so easy to get used to having English by it self and for History by it self, but with this resourse you can mix them. I also love the fact that they can work with problemsolving. Because I think that that is something that not many schools works alot with. It is something that is often forgotten or pushed aside by something "more important". Problemsolving becomes a extra activity that the students can do when they are done with their ordinary assignment. But I think that is wrong. Problemsolving and the ability to work in pairs is underestimated.
I think that it is important that you do not just work with this site at home or just at school. To involve the parents at home and to create an ability to practice whenever the student feels like it.
Another thing I thought about is that it is important that you do not build the lessons on this resource. That you just use it as a complement. Because as well as it is important to learn how the computer works it is important to not loose the handwriting part. I have not decided what i think about the blog part. I mean the part where they write a blogpost. It is a good option but it can also be tricky. In a blog you usually writes whatever comes in mind and sometimes it can be personal. And I am afraid that this can create bullyingsituations if one student writes with much feeling and emotion which other students can find as a reason to bully. I do not know, maybe I am thinking too much about it. But it is good to have in mind. Maybe you can make it clear to the students that the blog is not the main idea with this resource. Because in a blog you can write about anything, and all student might not write about school. And if they do not, does it not kind of loose the purpose then? After all it is a school related thing, so focus should be at school and learning.
By using this resourse you get away from all the papers. All the papers that you give the children in school that they are supposed to keep in mind where they put. I think we all know that it can be a disaster. But by using this rescourse you have everything at one place, sorted under different folds. I do not know if you wrote that the old tests they do on the site is still there afterwards? Because if they are the students can always go back and look at what they did wrong or what they found more difficult.
Hi Louise!
ReplyDeleteI think that you have done an excellent and a detailed description about the free ITC-resource Wickspace.com. I have never heard about this page but when reading your description you got me interested to use the page with pupils in the class. This page looks like something many teachers and students probably would use because the resource looks like it is easy to learn. It is hard to get the students to use something new, therefore I like the idea that you wrote that the children are going to make an account for homework for the second lesson. It is good that you need to be a member if you would like to write something on the page, so that something that is not proper to write comes up on the page.
It is good that the parents can follow what their children have for homework and what else that is going on in school. I also like that the parents can follow their children’s development in school because the student are writing in the wick.
I like that you have written how you can plan and work with the page step by step. I also like that you can use this page to do tests, it is more fun sometimes do to tests over de computer then on a piece of paper that the students do most time.
I really enjoyed reading your blog post and wickspace.com is something I could see myself using.
//Danijela Bojic
Well done Louise!
ReplyDeleteI think you've written a very good description of how to use Wikispaces. I myself have been a student of this website when I was part of an international project in mathematics, and I remember that it was an extremely easy way to work and communicate with each other. Mostly we worked in smaller groups, and then it was very easy to upload our different ideas and discuss them online. We also had some individual assignments. One of them was to write a self reflection every day, and by having access to Wikispace it made it much easier for me to write all that because I like getting home, and get some perspective of the day. What did I learn today? Could I use this as a teacher? After getting all my thoughts together it was much easier for me to write my reflection.
Although I never had the opportunity to learn how to self-administrate it. You made a very clear description of how to use the page, especially by describing step by step with accompanying images.
What I liked about your description is that it is accessible to all, even if you cannot attend the lesson you can still participate online. Accessibility is a positive element, as you mention in the part about always being able to do your homework whether you're in school or not.
One thing I wondered is that it sounds like the setup of this website is very time demanding. It would be great if there were some pre-planned lessons that you could use. I also thought about what age it is appropriate to start using this website. When I used the page it was at a University level, and I thought it was a bit hard to understand all of it. Do you think it is possible to use it in primary school? Given that they have their parents help I think it would work!
Thank you for your inspiration and description!
Best Regards
Anna Sandell