I'm teaching a remedial maths group and I like the idea of using wiki'sto generate problem solving stratagies. One wiki page per problem and the group members all put down their ideas - hopefully the process pops out the solution.
I trialled this and found major disappointment from my students as several tackled the same problem at the same time. The first person gets to contribute, the others are bounced and asked to resubmit.
I'd like to hear from other teachers - how they are using wiki's - especially if you have students with learning difficulties.
thanks Anne
In reply to Anne Nicolson
Ang: Any experience in using wiki's in high school setting
by Tormod Hansen -
I have used a wiki in a high school class. I made closed groups in the wiki and then the students in each group could write together on their subjects. When they have finished, I open the groups and all the students could see, what each group had written.
In reply to Tormod Hansen
Re: Ang: Any experience in using wiki's in high school setting
by Anne Nicolson -
Thanks- yes I think my first wiki efforts have been probably a lesson in how not to do it.
our group was the first people to use the laptops after summer break. Although the chargers were switched on - someone had tripped a circuit breaker and there was no power to the room.
When we did manage to get some going by finding power adapters the machines wanted to download fresh virus definitions. Another 5min gone.
After this our site crashed - fatal flaws etc - the tech people were upgrading a php accelerator. Students beginning to lose interest.
At last at our wiki - students were able to add to the wiki page - and then got bounced! Only one students work was saved. The technical people were fiddling again and said try again. Students happy to have wasted a period.
My lesson - tell the students they are test pilots and the first few experiences with new students, new technology are going to be testing the landscape. That is unless the gov. suddenly funds a very keen technican to smooth the way for ordinary class teachers.
our group was the first people to use the laptops after summer break. Although the chargers were switched on - someone had tripped a circuit breaker and there was no power to the room.
When we did manage to get some going by finding power adapters the machines wanted to download fresh virus definitions. Another 5min gone.
After this our site crashed - fatal flaws etc - the tech people were upgrading a php accelerator. Students beginning to lose interest.
At last at our wiki - students were able to add to the wiki page - and then got bounced! Only one students work was saved. The technical people were fiddling again and said try again. Students happy to have wasted a period.
My lesson - tell the students they are test pilots and the first few experiences with new students, new technology are going to be testing the landscape. That is unless the gov. suddenly funds a very keen technican to smooth the way for ordinary class teachers.
In reply to Anne Nicolson
Re: Ang: Any experience in using wiki's in high school setting
by Art Lader -
Hi, Anne,
You might want to contact Tomo Switzer - http://moodle.org/user/view.php?id=3740&course=5 . He has been using wikis with his high school math students for some time now.
Hope this helps.
-- Art
In reply to Anne Nicolson
Re: Any experience in using wiki's in high school setting
by Jesse Thorstad -
Anne,
I have the great luxury of teaching a night school class at our alternative high school, and thus have very small class sizes (like, 5 per class!).
We recently did our first Wiki, just to become familiar with the concept. The Wiki was not curricular in nature, since we just wanted to learn the technology. We created a small Wiki on Nascar (what with the Daytona 500 coming the next week, and a big Nascar fan in the class).
I knew going into it that we would have trouble doing simultaneous submissions, so I spent some time demonstrating, let them each try adding a new page or hyperlink, then made an assignment that each student had to add 5 entries of some sort within the next week. That helped ensure that they would be doing their work perhaps from home, and at different times, to prevent the simultaneous edit problem.
I doubt your classes are as small, but if you get a chance to assign Wiki submissions over a period of a week or so, you may have better chances of success! I think my students liked it, and I plan to do more soon!
Jesse
I have the great luxury of teaching a night school class at our alternative high school, and thus have very small class sizes (like, 5 per class!).
We recently did our first Wiki, just to become familiar with the concept. The Wiki was not curricular in nature, since we just wanted to learn the technology. We created a small Wiki on Nascar (what with the Daytona 500 coming the next week, and a big Nascar fan in the class).
I knew going into it that we would have trouble doing simultaneous submissions, so I spent some time demonstrating, let them each try adding a new page or hyperlink, then made an assignment that each student had to add 5 entries of some sort within the next week. That helped ensure that they would be doing their work perhaps from home, and at different times, to prevent the simultaneous edit problem.
I doubt your classes are as small, but if you get a chance to assign Wiki submissions over a period of a week or so, you may have better chances of success! I think my students liked it, and I plan to do more soon!
Jesse
In reply to Jesse Thorstad
Re: Any experience in using wiki's in high school setting
by John Blake -
I also work in an alternative school, my students reacted the same way. I tried a different idea. As a science teacher, we went to a local online newspaper, and copied a complete article from a controversial issue about a proposed regional landfill into a forum and asked them to read the article and reply what they thought and tell why they felt that way about their opinion. They then had reply to one other student's reply in a positive way as to support their reply.
That was not a very good activity. There has to be someone out there that knows how to create effective content on a Moodle.
That was not a very good activity. There has to be someone out there that knows how to create effective content on a Moodle.
Hi John!
Could you be more specific on why you felt this was not a good activity?
Also, how did you structure the activity with the students?
I think this should have been a good "science literacy" exercise for the students.
WP1
Could you be more specific on why you felt this was not a good activity?
Also, how did you structure the activity with the students?
I think this should have been a good "science literacy" exercise for the students.
WP1
I felt that my newspaper article was not a good activity in that the students did not realize how to respond. They asked questons like, how much do I have to write? The problem with my students is that they have never been required to respond to questions over one or two words in a fill in the blank worksheet. In view of that, you are very correct that is is a good science literacy exercise. I had not really thought that asking them to reply in a forum, the kids develop more skills than just getting a correct answer on a worksheet.
Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks for the feedback!
In reply to John Blake
Re: Any experience in using wiki's in high school setting
by Dennis Daniels -
We're all swimming against the flow; I'm of the mind that curiosity is beaten out early on. By the time students reach high school most curiosity has been beaten out by busy work and non-sensical assigments. Without purpose we, even as adults, grow bored and lethargic.
Effective content is multi-faceted. I ask myself all the time: Why does period two excel over all of the other periods? Why is period six a free for all and period one silent as a tomb? Human chemistry, class dynamics, wakefulness, relative standing in popularity contests... all of this affects even the best lessons and content.
The eighty-twenty rule. Twenty per cent want to rule and the others... will sit back until they wake up to their own version of what is important.
Why are there those who do, and those who don't? No instructional content, no matter how good, will get everyone's attention.
I use lots of quizzes, short answer mostly, with lots of links to other sites to keep my students constantly asking questions and doing research to find answers. The lateral conversations they have off-line are quite satisfactory in depth.
If it was easy, everyone would be a teacher
Dennis
Effective content is multi-faceted. I ask myself all the time: Why does period two excel over all of the other periods? Why is period six a free for all and period one silent as a tomb? Human chemistry, class dynamics, wakefulness, relative standing in popularity contests... all of this affects even the best lessons and content.
The eighty-twenty rule. Twenty per cent want to rule and the others... will sit back until they wake up to their own version of what is important.
Why are there those who do, and those who don't? No instructional content, no matter how good, will get everyone's attention.
I use lots of quizzes, short answer mostly, with lots of links to other sites to keep my students constantly asking questions and doing research to find answers. The lateral conversations they have off-line are quite satisfactory in depth.
If it was easy, everyone would be a teacher
Dennis
In reply to Dennis Daniels
Re: Any experience in using wiki's in high school setting
by John Blake -
Please tell me more about the way you design the short answer quizzes.
In reply to Anne Nicolson
Re: Any experience in using wiki's in high school setting
by Jurgis Pralgauskis -
Wiki is supposed to be asynchronous tool considering communication.
* So if many students are working at a time, it's better to do brainstorming in chat or at least forum.
Anyway, if students are bounced, they can still "go back", copy their text, and then submit it by starting a new edit session in wiki.
* good strategy would be to plan the sequence of wiki contributions (this helped us to sturcture collaboration of 4 groups (each face-to-face group had one PC), quite good result grew out after 2 rounds of submissions.. -- people were working with wiki for the first time, and it took about 2 hours - of course, time may vary..)
* So if many students are working at a time, it's better to do brainstorming in chat or at least forum.
Anyway, if students are bounced, they can still "go back", copy their text, and then submit it by starting a new edit session in wiki.
* good strategy would be to plan the sequence of wiki contributions (this helped us to sturcture collaboration of 4 groups (each face-to-face group had one PC), quite good result grew out after 2 rounds of submissions.. -- people were working with wiki for the first time, and it took about 2 hours - of course, time may vary..)
In reply to Anne Nicolson
Re: Any experience in using wiki's in high school setting
by David Le Blanc -
Sometime ago I replied to someone's post in the General Problems thread
about using Wikis. I was describing how I use it in a Computer Science
course. That more properly belongs here: Wikis in a Java Programming course 