Lesson Plans

Some of you have commented about the idea of a wiki being more appealing than a normal assignments and I have to agree. I've been thinking that I want to do my lesson plan on wikis. I think something like our ITSopedia that is a great source of review for all that we have learned would be good in any classroom. It gives the students a place to hopefully get answers on whatever they have questions with. Now I just need to think of an authentic problem. I can see the wiki being the "clear outcome" - a compilation of their efforts. They could be creating this collection for.... online homework help site? Help others studying the same thing?

If you wiki, I will follow??

I have been curious about developing ways to use wikis in my classroom. But today was the end of one of my units and they had to do a presentation to a group of "investors". I told them that they needed to have the powerpoint to me before class (emailed on Sunday, brought to me yesterday). In one class with 10 groups, I had 4. I gave them every opportunity to get this to me. If I can't get them to turn in this work, how can I expect them to take time outside of class to go online and post?

Wikis

I was reading the chapter in Richardson about Wiki's and like the other chapters, started thinking about my own class. I would really like to try creating a wiki like our ITSopedia. Each chapter, we could create a portion of the wiki to summarize what we have learned. I find that when it comes time for the test, students always want to know what is going to be on it. With a wiki, they could go back and look at everything we have collectively learned and use it to study. Unlike a blog that requires consistent communication, I don't think that students would have to be as diligent about checking the wiki (and therefore the no computer issue would not be such a problem). Everyone could contribute once or twice throughout a chapter (topic, example problem, helpful steps) and then everyone could review it near the end.

Blackboard and Blogging

I got an email the other day from one of my AP's. There is a wiki and blog tool on the FCPS Blackboard site. Has anyone used it? I was just looking at it and I see where I can let the students create entries (by username - id number) but it won't let me let them add comments.