Scott Crellin’s Edtec Blog

Development

• What tools (or combination of tools) will you use to support the site?
• What customizations will you need to do to your site?
• Are you happy with how well it turned out?

As a wiki, the site is pretty much self-contained. It will not require much in the way of outside tools or applications to support. I am still considering adding some tutorials to the main page using Adobe Captivate. It is not a complicated site for students to interact with, but some kids will be approaching it with absolutely zero experience with wikis and little experience with using images and word processing on the web. I do plan on spending some time instructing them in person on how to go about using the wiki, but my experience in teaching a class full of kids a procedure in the computer lab has taught me that a significant percentage of kids need extra help as soon as the instruction is over, and the teacher simply cannot be at every computer in the room simultaneously. Having some short videos that students can watch and follow along with on the site after the group instruction should help sort out a lot of their problems, or at least give them something useful to do while they are waiting for one-on-one help. I’m thinking that a video on editing a page, one on finding and inserting images, and one on discussion pages should probably do it. This will certainly not solve all of my students’ problems, but it should cut down on how many need that one-on-one time-consuming help.

I have customized my site by changing the color and template to something that I find a bit more appealing visually. I have added a page that will address each substandard of the California Content Standards in the study of Ancient Egypt in the 6th grade. Within these pages I need to add some structured areas where students can add content, including text, pictures, and possibly a vodcast they have created. I have applied to the wikispaces people for a free educational upgrade to my site, and pending that approval, will make further customizations to the site.

So far I’m quite happy with the way the site is turning out. When it is complete on my end, I may have some more to say about that. When I finally have students editing it, there will be even more to say.

sample podcast

Background music was downloaded from Podsafe Audio you will hear Julia Ecklar’s Overture.

Sound effects were downloaded from freesound.org and included the following samples:

• By Simon_Lacelle : Ba-da-dum.wav
• By RHumphries : rbh Applause 04 big.WAV
• By Kibben : edited horn beep.wav

This site (link) is intended to be are repository of information gathered and presented by students on Ancient Egypt. When a user visits this site I want them to be able to do different things depending on who they are.

Our students, the creators of the page will be made members and given editing permissions for the space. They will research various topics related to ancient Egypt that are based on the 6th grade standards and inspired by their own interests. In groups they will collaborate to complete a framework of a page on our site. The framework will include questions and suggestions for topics that they should be finding answers to as well as directions on how to research information and how to edit the space. Students will also visit pages created by other groups and be required to comment on each other’s work. In this manner they will learn from their classmates’ research. In the past, I have had students turn in research papers, sometimes share a short presentation with the class, but there was no accountability for the audience to make an effort to learn from the presenter. By monitoring discussions of the different pages, I will be able to see who is

Teachers and administrators visiting the space will find a student created space in which they are demonstrating their knowledge of state Social Studies standards. they will find evidence of students working together to develop informative and well-organized content in a creative and thoughtful way. They will see the students’ work in progress and in a state of completion, and will be able to interact with it and provide their encouragement and support through the discussion pages.

Depending on the level of success the project achieves, it may be reproduced for another ancient civilization, or created anew next year with a fresh group of 6th graders. If the students demonstrate adequate knowledge of the standards, show evidence of collaboration, and discuss and edit each others’ work, I will consider this project worthwhile. It would certainly become an ongoing project at that point. If the project only meets a part of these goals, I may end up making changes but trying again with a new group of students.

The users of the wiki that I intend to create will be 6th grade students at Castle Park Elementary in Chula Vista. This may end up including all 6th graders or may just be my class; that depends on my administration’s decision on whether or not to allow us to continue to group and rotate all of our 6th graders for the majority of the day.

These students come from a variety of different backgrounds and skill levels with computers. Some are quite fluent in using related internet applications, such as myspace and facebook, where some of their experience will transfer into the domain of the wiki. Others come from homes that do not have personal computers and their only computing experience is with infrequent computer lab time at school.

Our school has a new computer lab with 30 PCs that have only been used to run an intervention program called Successmaker. I’d like to get groups of students working on these machines to do research and use the features of the wiki to collaborate and construct an entry to our wikispaces site that I will construct.

Working in groups and using computers should be a motivating experience for them. The knowledge that their work will be public, that it can and will be viewed by other students, teachers, parents, and administrators will hopefully inspire them to do their best work. The peer review aspects of the wiki should also help to ensure that the information will be factually correct and relatively free of errors. By making it abundantly clear to them that each time they make an edit, we can all see who did it should help to keep the site free of unnecessary or unwanted content.

The original idea that I posted about in my first post was using a wiki with my classroom. I envision a class website about a particular social studies topic in which different groups of students would be responsible for the content in different categories. In the past, I have had my students write research reports on Ancient Egypt, but I think Egypt would also lend itself well to a wiki project. Other civilizations from the 6th grade curriculum would work for this project as well, such as Greece, Mesopotamia, Rome, Hebrews, China, or India, but due to time constraints in teaching standards that aren’t tested, I usually have to focus on just a few civilizations, and Egypt is one that the kids usually get excited about. Success in this project might lead us to create wikis for other civilizations as well.

I’m thinking that the wiki will probably be done in wikispaces, which I have become somewhat familiar with. I didn’t really like pbwiki all that much, and I don’t know how much time I’ll have to experiment with other sites. I’m currently envisioning a main page that I will be constructing with links to other pages that are focused on different categories relating to Egypt. I will create a kind of template with a variety of topics and questions for each category to guide the content that the students add to each page. I’m also hoping that there will be time for students to create artwork that can be displayed on the site as well as some short videos. Our Egypt unit also coincides with a field trip to the San Diego Natural History Museum, which has a great Egypt section. They have always allowed me to take pictures of their displays, so student photos could also be included in the wiki.

AAARRGH! Somehow, while fiddling with the design of my blog I managed to lose my first post and associated comments. I know for a fact, that at no time did I ever click a delete button, yet the fact remains.  It is gone.  How did this happen? I wish I could tell you. If I knew, maybe I could recover it. At least it was only the introductory post and didn’t really contain too much content. So, here we go again….