TeachPaperless Wikis

This is just a reminder to folks to take advantage of the TeachPaperless wikis. Dozens of teachers have offered advice and observations on topics ranging from paperless lesson planning to 21C education course design.

The Paperless Earth Day Wiki presents documentation by teachers who took the 2010 Paperless Earth Day Pledge. There are lesson plans and examples of paperlessness both lo-tech and high-tech.

The Social Technology in Education Lesson Plan Wiki presents examples of lesson plans incorporating social and participatory media; it also includes a 'discussion' tab with examples of social tech integrated plans written up by grad students in my class at JHU.

Finally, the 21C Ed Grad Wiki is a new project seeking to answer the question: "What should an authentic 21C graduate program in education look like?"

All of these wikis are open to public editing and we encourage all teachers and admins with something to say to take part in helping to create more helpful resources for 21C learning.

Paperless Earth Day Wiki

After you check out the list of over 1150 teachers worldwide who have pledged to go paperless for Earth Day 2010... and after you have yourself pledged to go paperless... then it's time to share ideas and documentation on the new Paperless Earth Day Wiki.

Teachers have already started submitting their own plans for the day!

My kids made something today.

My sophomores are getting ready to start reading Caesar's 'Gallic Wars'. A classic second-year text, the book is a series of commentaries written by Julius Caesar and it presents his account of the war.

It also gives his version of what the Celts of Ancient Gaul were like.

And, of course, that's part of the problem.

Year in and year out, I read this text with students and year in and year out one of them pipes up and says: "Hey, wait a minute. Isn't this book a little bit biased against the Celts?"

And I reply: "Yup."

So this year, one of my students suggested we try to level the playing field a bit. And so, as a class, we started scouring the Web for good info about the Celts themselves. We found bits of folktales and records of archaeological digs, we unearthed ancient artworks and explored even more ancient mythologies.

But we had to look all over the place for this stuff. There was no one depository adequate for the Celt-curious needs of high school sophomore Latin students.

So we decided to make one.

And that's how we came to create... drumroll, please... The Wiki of Annotated Web Links For the Study of Ancient Gaul and Ancient Celtic Culture!

So now, we're asking other teachers and students to take our wiki out for a test drive.

Edit it. Add to it. Improve it.

If you take a look, you'll see that only the first of three sections so far is organized alphabetically; and only the first section has been completely vetted (my kids have got some homework tonight!). But, you'll also find that all of the entries are in proper MLA format. And the sources range from university collections to museum holdings to records of digs to out-of-print compendiums of knowledge and information.

You might find some of the annotations to be a bit bland or too general. That's fine: go ahead and scrub 'em out and write your own. A wiki is only as useful as its readership is vigilant.

You may find the rating system a bit limited (as we only allowed sites that scored a '3' or better in our class discussions); so perhaps you will change that or find a better solution.

Perhaps you'll do any or all of these things. Because wikis aren't just about information; they are about the constructive argument that unfolds in the process of making decisions.

In a way, a wiki can be the best manifestation of Hegelian principles. They are truly synthesized projects; and that synthesis itself is catalyzed by human engagement and debate.

Best of all, wikis are made. MADE. By people. People working together. People editing one another's work. People teaching and learning by doing. And people working and learning together and producing something helpful to others.

My kids made something today.

Social Technology in Education Lesson Plan Wiki

Seeking teachers to submit content to the new Social Technology in Education Lesson Plan Wiki!

There are so many fresh approaches being taken to the integration of social and participatory media in education, I thought it would be a useful thing to have a practitioner-created resource full of lesson plans demonstrating the best practices in social tech enhanced teaching.

Feel free to submit content and ideas. It's a wiki... you can't mess it up. Experiment, mash it up, get some thoughts out there, and let's put together a nice free and collaborative resource.

Example Paperless Assignments: Students Build a Resource Wiki

A few teachers have asked for more examples of paperless assignments. Here is a collaborative take-home test I just gave my Latin II class. They've got 33 hours to complete the task as a group and they will not have class from now until it's due.

Prep-wise, we spent yesterday's class discussing and evaluating online sources.

Content-wise, they have created an online resource bibliography on the Gallic Wars and now they are responsible for using that bibliography to create their own wiki entry on the History of the Gallic Wars. They will be allowed to use this wiki as an aid in answering the open-ended essay question which will comprise 1/5 of their final exam grade.

Tech-wise, they have used Twitter hash-tags to build a communal online bibliography searchable through Twitter Search. They [will] have built and edited a wiki and will have teleconferenced via Skype or some other IM/text-means.

What will they learn? Hopefully they've learned to distinguish good from poor sources, how to work collaboratively using Web 2.0 technology, and how to construct a quality and exhaustive encyclopedia entry. I think the key is that they will be using this wiki as support on the final exam; it's not really just an 'end-product' in and of itself, but rather it's the 'tool' or 'resource' that they'll be allowed to use to give background info and examples in building their thesis on the open-ended question.

You are creating a collaborative wiki on the topic: History of the Gallic Wars.

1. Use Twitter Search to find the hash-tagged links you made today for the class bibliography. Those links form your source material.

2. Choose a class leader. The class leader will be responsible for creating the wiki.

3. Using Skype, Twitter, or just the old-fashioned cellphone, you are responsible as a class for completing the wiki by midnight tomorrow. (We don't have class tomorrow, so you are responsible for figuring out a way to do this).

4. I will be reviewing the edit history of the wiki. If you don't work on the wiki, you will not get any credit for the project. So don't think that someone else is just going to manage to get it done and you'll receive the group grade. No dice. You are responsible for earning your grade.

5. I will be grading for content and style. Please cover the period from Caesar's arrival in Gaul to his crossing the Rubicon at the beginning of the Civil Wars. The wiki should be written in proper academic style; watch to see that the tone is consistent. Review the entry in Wikipedia as a model -- for both good and bad.

6. Do not cut and paste from elsewhere. And do not rely wholly on Wikipedia. Though it is a strong source of encyclopedic material, I actually have a few problems with the entries related to the Gallic Wars -- can you figure out what they are?

7. You will be allowed to access your wiki on the Final Exam. So, be sure it is accurate and of the highest quality. Anything less would amount to jeopardizing your grade on the essay portion of the final.

8. Good luck. I trust you will figure out how to do this. I am always a fan of creative solutions.

This will be a double weighted group test grade.

Wikis and Google Docs

A reader writes:

I'd like to suggest that a wiki might be a useful tool for some of the tasks you've recommended. I'd be interested to know when you would use a wiki and when a blog would be better suited to the task.

Wikis are very powerful tools. And yes, I do use them regularly with classes. Now, one way to go about it is to create a new wiki on Wikia. I'll post on how to use Wikia a bit down the road, as it has a number of complex figurations that I don't want to get into just yet. But advanced readers should explore widely. We use Wikia here at school as a way of communicating with alumni and creating a comprehensive collaborative school history.

To make Wikis in class, I use a much simpler option: Google Docs. These are collaborative documents -- typically Word and Excel documents -- stored online and accessible by a 'team' you create through Google. To get started: go to Google, click on Docs, create a new document, and add/invite collaborators. All you need to start working is a Google ID.

Once you have added collaborators, in effect you have created the environment to make a quasi-wiki. The basic difference between a G-Doc and a Wiki is that you can limit the members of the party editing the G-Doc, which makes it ideal for a classroom situation.

Start with a simple project: Create an encyclopedia entry. Say you have twenty students in your English class. Split the group up into pairs, ideally each student on a computer. Choose a topic like, say, English Romanticism. Assign each pair a sub-section like Wordsworth, Byron, Historical Context, etc... Each pair will then research their sub-section online gathering information, images and video, and hyperlinks to sources. The pairs will then enter their findings into the G-Doc. The beauty in this is that all twenty students can be working gathering information and images and entering them into their sections on the SAME doc at the SAME time. That's what makes it collaborative.

Now take it to the next level. Once the basic sub-sections are finished, have each student pair edit the work of another student pair. They should add more images, check the links, and create MLA-format bibliographical entries for each. These will be placed at the bottom of the doc.

Now you have a complete encyclopedia entry with a comprehensive hyperlinked bibliography. Perfect for test/exam review as well as a jumping off point for research work.

On top of all of this is the fact that you are also a member of the G-Doc party. So on your own computer screen, you can see the work of each of the students as they enter information, images, and links into the doc in real-time. Meaning that you no longer have to wait to get a 'final-product' to gauge how students are comprehending the material. Rather than receiving something 'finished' which contains errors that will ultimately prove to confuse the student, you will see errors being put into the doc in real-time which then gives you the opportunity to correct the students or raise questions to the class for purpose of discussion.

And if you really want to up the ante, just consider the fact that none of this actually need be done in the classroom. You could just as well schedule a 7PM wiki-session on a Tuesday night and in 45 minutes of homework time have the students complete a document ready to use the next day in class.