Wikis

I just finished reading a chapter on wikis, websites “where anyone can edit anything anytime they want”. Richardson provides a background on wikis by explaining that wiki is short for quick, and the first wiki was created in 1995.

Richardson also writes about Wikipedia. He explains that some people worry about the collaborative nature of Wikipedia. They believe that it contains errors and misrepresentations because anyone can create or edit a Wikipedia entry. However, there are many more people dedicated to correcting errors than there are who make errors, Richardson claims.

He goes on to argue that teachers should help their students learn how to use Wikipedia. He claims “they are already using it in their research, whether we like it or not.” He also argues that Wikipedia teaches student a great deal about collaboration and negotiation.

I agree with Richardson’s statement that Wikipedia is a good starting point for research. He says Wikipedia was developed to present a neutral perspective on every possible topic. This means that Wikipedia may help students see an overview of a subject before looking at something from a specific perspective.

Richardson included many other wiki sources:

1. Recipes Wiki
2. Wikitravel
3. Wiktionary
4. Wikinews
5. Wikiquotes
6. Lyrics Wiki
7. Star Trek Wiki (Memory-alpha.org)
8. Simple Wikipedia, which use simple words to help adults and children who are learning English
9. Wiki Junior (“The aim of this project is to produce age-appropriate non-fiction books for children from birth to age 12.”)
10. Wiki Books (“the open-content textbooks collection that anyone can edit”)
11. Wikispaces.com or PBwiki
12. Webnote
13. Google Docs

Here are some of Richardson’s suggestions on how to use wikis in school:

1. Create an online text for your classroom that every student can contribute to
2. Develop an online wiki to collaborate between classes – your class could share research, resources, videos, or images with other classes at the school
3. Have students create or edit entries for books on Wiki Books or Wiki Junior
4. Use a wiki to allow your students to share projects with each other, with other classrooms at the school, or with a global network through collaboration with students in other states or countries
5. Use a wiki to ask students to share concepts and examples to review for a test
6. Develop a wiki for a book study project – ask students to share content about a book (interviews, reference pages, fan fiction, images, etc.)

Overall, I found some of this information helpful, but some of it was very basic. I think I may have learned more about wikis through YouTube videos rather than through Richardson’s book.

I have a class wiki, which I use to keep a class schedule and make handouts available to my students. This term is the first time I have used one for a class I am teaching. Next term I plan to make it more collaborative by asking my students to contribute to it. I’m still thinking about ways that I would like them to contribute. If you would like to check on the wiki, you can visit this page: english0950spring2013.pbworks.com.

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Investing in blogs

I just got home from a community college class that I teach, English 0950: Essay Writing. I've decided to use blogs with our second essay assignment, a compare and contrast essay. My students have been going through the writing process. The assignment is fairly flexible: choose two subjects that you know well and make a main idea (thesis) about them; decide on an audience you will write for and (attempt to) convince the audience to agree with your main idea. Because this is a broad writing prompt, it takes several class meetings to brainstorm ideas and create a focus.

I have taught this type of writing several times, so I decided it would be a good opportunity to add a new component: blogging. I've told my students that we are focusing on the audience and purpose for writing because with a blog, a potential audience could actually read their material. This made a few of my students a little nervous at first, but since I am allowing them to create an anonymous blog, their fears were short lived.

However, I realized today that I underestimated the amount of time that is necessary to learn about blogging and to create a blog. We had a computer lab scheduled today, and I had several goals planned, goals that now seem pretty lofty. I planned to: 1) watch a short YouTube video about blogging (see my last post), 2) show them this blog as an example, 3) set up our blogs, 4) review some examples, 5) create a first blog post about the example blogs. We only got through items 1, 2, and 3 today. It took over an hour to complete these things. I am realizing that blogging is a big time investment. I hope that this investment will be worth it.

I have some fun ideas planned for blogging in this class, and I hope I have the time to use them. I want to teach the method of rhetorical analysis through music videos because I think it will be an easier way to help students understand rhetorical elements and how to evaluate the strength of an argument. Also, I think it will be fun to ask students to choose a music video, add a YouTube music video to their blog, and complete a rhetorical analysis for their chosen video, that they will then share with the class. I can see my students reading each other's blogs, listening to/viewing several videos, and commenting about their classmates' analyses. Yet, after today I am worried about how much time this will take.

I am hopeful that I can help my students become comfortable with blogs so that they can post blogs as homework outside of class. However, my students range in age from 19 to their late 50s and vary in technical experience, so I think they will need a good amount of guided practice. I'll have to see how it goes.

To be continued...

Outside Resources

I have been looking for resources to share with my students (at a community college) when we start a blogging project. This YouTube video seems to best explain the development of blogs in a quick way. I thought I'd share it with you all in case you want to use it for blogging in your classroom:

Blogs in Plain English

More About Blogs

In chapter 3 of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Richardson argues that teachers need to become bloggers before asking their students to create a blog. He states that by modeling the blog process, teachers can help students understand the value of blogs. They can also help students learn what is appropriate to post on a blog.

Here are some sites Richardson recommends:

1. supportblogging.com (This site provides “an opportunity for students, teachers, administrators, parents, and others to help promote an understanding of the benefits of educational blogging.” This would be a good resource to use with students and parents)

2. edublogs.com

3. blogger.com

4. 21classes.com

He also lists some things to keep in mind when getting started with blogging in a classroom:

1. Consider your students’ ability to access the Internet at school and at home

2. Start small; use a blog to keep an online schedule and instructions for homework so that you become comfortable with online communication with students

3. Create a list of blogs for students to read so that they can see examples

4. Get your students to practice responding to blogs by having them comment on interesting questions on your teacher blog

5. Have students create a collaborative blog with a small group to practice posting and commenting

6. Then, help students set up individual blogs for themselves

7. Have a discussion on what students are allowed to do with their blogs. (Make sure to talk about things like: is it all right to post pictures, diary/journal type entries, and posts about events/things outside of the classroom or curriculum.) Allowing students to personally invest in blogs can make them more engaged, but it can make assessment difficult

8. Make sure administrators and parents are clear about the expectations and reasoning behind your use of blogs

Overall, I found most of this information to be common sense, but it’s good to have this resource to refer to when using a blog with students. After reading this chapter, I might use the author’s suggestion of creating a blog for a small group of students to practice blogging in a safe way. This might help some of my digital immigrant (older students) troubleshoot with each other when first learning how to blog. I don’t think this would be necessary for younger students (digital natives) because they might not need as much scaffolding with blogs. I do like the ideas of asking students to read examples and talking about what is/is not appropriate to post on an educational blog.

Richardson's Ted Talk

This week I also watched a Ted Talk with Will Richardson (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni75vIE4vdk). The talk is very motivating. Though the video is not directly focused on blogs, it did give me some ideas of how I might use blogs in my classroom.

In the video, Richardson tells a short story about his daughter and how she taught herself to play Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” on her piano by downloading the sheet music and watching a video of a piano player’s fingers on the keys. He says that people today have access to thousands of potential teachers online, allowing them to learn about anything they are passionate about.

I can see myself asking my students to research a concept they would like to learn about. I could see myself following this process:

1. Setting up the purpose: I think it would be important to set up the lesson by having my students watch a segment of Richardson’s video. This could help me explain how education is changing and how access to knowledge has broadened, due to the Internet. This would help my students understand the purpose of the lesson – to use the Internet to research a topic of interest and to share what they have learned.

2. Practice with blogs and Internet research – I could create a webquest, complete a practice blog activity (asking students to post about an interesting question or image), and I could model the process of finding sources and writing about them with the class.

3. Online research: The students could then seek out videos, blogs, podcasts, articles, and websites that would help them learn about a concept of their choosing.

4. Analyzing sources: I could also incorporate a lesson on critical reading and analysis of sources, which would give us the opportunity to talk about trustworthy sources.

5. Create a blog post (or a series) on their findings: Then I could ask them to share what they have learned through blog posts – they could post their research, write about what they've learned, and they could add their own suggestions/advice about the concept (for others who may read the blog posts).

6. Comment and respond: I could ask the students to review what their classmates have posted and engage in an online conversation. This would allow them to share what they have learned with the class as well as a bigger audience through the Web.

I am sure I could branch out in many different ways, but this could be a basic plan to incorporate blogs in my class.

Blogging about blogging

Richardson’s second chapter is about weblogs. He explains “two new blogs are created every second” He also tells us that teachers need to help their students understand what a blog is. He says blogging is not journaling. Blogging is a constructivist approach that “engages students and adults in a process of thinking in words, not simply an accounting of the day’s events or feelings.” 

I know plenty of people who use blogs as journals. Yet, I think what Richardson is arguing here is, teachers should encourage students to use blogs in critical and analytic ways, not merely as personal diaries. This seems to go along with Richardson’s ideas that students may divulge more information about their private lives than may be appropriate for a school setting.

Richardson goes on to explain that blogs can teach students to think and read more critically and write more clearly. In the chapter of the book, Richardson provides many ways educators can use blogs, such as:

1. Class portals to communicate information
2.  An online filing cabinet for students and teachers to share work
3. E-portfolios
4. A collaborative space (students can collaborate with other students – both in the class and outside of the school – writers, professionals, etc.)
5.  School websites
6.  A live stream of the class (one of Richardson’s examples is a teacher who posts a live stream of his classroom, using Ustream - http://mrcsclassblog.blogspot.com/ - I am going to have to check this out during the school day)
7. Online book clubs
8. Blogs to react to interesting questions, quotes, or images
9. A collaborative class newsletter
10. A space to collect and share research
11. There are many more ideas about blogging - let me know if you'd like more examples!

 A brief summary of Richardson's ideas on blogging can be found on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_5F_zcOJ3o). 

One interesting idea Richardson brings forth is a quote from Connecticut profession Donald Leu: “Online reading and writing are so closely connected that it is not possible to separate them; we read online as authors and we write online as readers.” I think this is an interesting point to make – the idea that online reading and writing are active processes. 

Is this because the online environment makes sharing information easy and immediate? With traditional printed texts, students may tend to read to absorb information, or to collect it for later use. But when we read online, we can immediately respond to it, agree or disagree with the author(s), share it with others, respond to comments from others, and reflect on our understanding. It seems to be more of a back-and-forth exchange of information. Richardson says that the traditional end point of printed writing is publication. In contrast, publication is the midpoint in online writing because of the social aspect – online writing is “returned to and reflected upon.” We write online to reach online readers who often engage in conversation with us.

I would argue that in the educational context, the instructor must facilitate and model this back-and-forth exchange. This is because I could easily see students posting to a blog in a superficial manner – posting just to get the points and not really synthesizing, analyzing, or having a deep conversation about their learning. I guess this is true of anything based in a school system, though; students need to understand the importance and relevance of the use of blogs.