Anonymous Student Feedback on Wiki "French Revolution Ant Farm Diaries" Project

Wednesday, 14 February 2007 Clay Burell Print This Post

As promised, the anonymous student feedback on the just-concluded French Revolution “Ant Farm Diaries” Wiki / writing to learn project.

I can’t say I see much different from the non-anonymous feedback posted earlier.

The difference from the reflections at the beginning of the project do sound different, though. The learners have changed their tunes since then. And to me, there’s an important lesson there for other teachers considering implementing these new practices in their classrooms. It’s this:

Don’t let students talk you out of something they know nothing about. They’ll complain at first. They’ll be uncomfortable. They won’t see the big picture. They won’t see much at all. They’re addicted to their routines as much as we were. So–don’t listen to them too much at this stage. They’ll only ask you to be a traditional teacher.

But the whole point is to move beyond that teaching so they can learn more. So refuse to be the teacher they want you to be; instead, be the classroom leader they need. Don’t let them lead you backwards.

But do listen to them once you’ve finished your first voyage. Do that After Action Review.

Here are mine, all 12. More proof that kids are pretty smart at 15, and can enjoy learning and ask for more. Emphasis added, but nothing deleted (okay, I didn’t include one reflection so poorly written it didn’t communicate):

Learner #1

First of all, I would like to say that the ant farm diary project was something that was very sensational and creative. I really liked it, especially because we did something totally new and interesting. I’ll now be going into some detailed feedbacks.

GOOD

Creating the ant farm diary, like a said before, was a magnificent idea, because we got to engage in a more perspective point of view of the person we each had to become. Therefore, we were becoming experts on our social status, at least. Also, we had a chance to include other characters in our diaries, which made us learn about them too. Again, this was something that deviated us from normal, usual lectures, and it really did let us have some fun!

IMPROVEMENTS REQUIRED

Okay, I believe that many people said this so many times already, but I really agree with them, so I’ve got to say this once more. People just weren’t giving clear, detailed feedbacks. Sometimes, I got the feeling that they didn’t even read our diaries properly before commenting on them. It really showed when they told me to ‘add this and that’ to my diary when they were ‘already there’. I wish they could have spent more time reading other people’s diaries and also leave some detailed, helpful feedbacks, instead of just saying ‘nice job, I enjoyed it!’

Furthermore, I think that we should have had more time to revise and fully write our diaries. First of all, I don’t think we had enough time to go over the topic, and I also believe that we could have written more diaries – five weren’t enough for us to really grasp the whole concept of the revolution – this could have been a good idea.

We also could have added some more varieties to our project, such as having one particular event, and making people from different social status write about it from their own point of view. This really could have helped us learn how different social classes during those times differentiated from one another.

MAYBE NOT THIS…

I don’t really have much to say in this column. I really loved this project, and I would be happy to do another one like this.

However, one thing I’d like to add is this. I think we relied too much on writing ant farm diaries, rather than really learning about the revolution itself. Although we did have reading materials and some lecture classes, people seriously varied a lot in the amount of effort they put into this project. I believe that some people still does not know much about the revolution, because it kind of shows in their diaries. I’m just saying that we could have left some room for other activities…

Mr. B’s Response:
I agree about the pace: too fast. It’s a conflict built in to having to cover so much material in limited time.

Another point: it’s an unfortunate fact that all students are not created equal. Some work harder, write better, read better, and learn better. (But all can grow, which is the point of education.)

How much everybody learned will come out when I get past grading the diaries and move on to the traditional essay test you all took. Unfortunately, there will probably be the usual span of grades from alpha to foxtrot That’s the reality in any type of classroom, traditional or modern….

Learner #2

Something to keep:

well…. What I liked about doing Ant Farm Dairy was that I was able to thoroughly look into history of French Revolution. Just by imagining my self being in that time and write diaries about it, made me understand more about the history. Also since the diary was done in wikis, I was able to edit pictures and change any errors, which would be too difficult to do in hand written assignments.

Something to improve:

I think interacting with characters weren’t as successful as it was expected. For students I think, was hard to blend other characters in as the story of their diaries progress. Also commentings or feedback needs improvement since some people don’t get lot of comments as they are expected to have.

Something to reject:

Frankly I can not really think of anything to reject. Some difficulties I had with this “Ant Farm Diary” just needs improvement, that’s all. ^^

Learner #3

I’ll just point out the bits I think needs changing.

Interaction: I thought the whole ant farm idea would be an entertaining read as a final product, however i don’t think it is worth all the extra effort put into it. The diaries are awesome, but not the interaction…..

Feedback: Much of my feedback was pretty useless to me, and sometimes I didn’t even get the feedback from people!! I just think this bit of the Diary work needs some tuning up…

Learner #4
what’s good(3)
- There’s no doubt this wiki projects have not only given many chances to improve my writing skills but also put the facts into my head strongly. Also, the discussions we do in class has been better than just normal lectures. We surely do think more about what the answer is if we were to answer. Feedbacks. We surely do want to get better, and also, we would be learning to listen to others’ advice.

what to improve(3)
- may be do something other than writing based works? Of course, writing plays a vital role in our life, for we need to show our opinions. But this is world history. I believe and hope there are more varieties of learning world history. It is important to learn to find these varieties by ourselves, but experiencing some of it in class wouldn’t be bad.
- this is a trivial thing, but the discussions could have some supplements. I would recommend using random selection to choose people to participate not that I’m a student(because I personally don’t like it either…)but as I’m an criticizer at this moment. This gives an effect that makes students brain and eyes open altogether.
- well, and group working should be done more carefully. I think we mostly did group works because the work we had to do was so big in quantity that we had break it up. But doing group works in ways to be more cooperative and working on team works would be more helpful. I can’t think of anything specific about this “team work” right now, but I somehow wish to have somethings added.

things to let go(1)
- we should let go of the silence in class. make more opportunities(opinion asking questions) probably.

I hope there weren’t any too strong words in here.

Besides AAR, I’m still curious about why teachers teach “specific” stuff in history if they know it wouldn’t help very much later on.

Learner #5

The feedback I got from other students were quite helpful because they made both positive and negative comments so that I could consider making some positive changes.

Writing the diaries required a lot of reading and understanding and took me a long time to do. But I thought it was a great way to learn history and was interesting and not boring at all. It was much better than just writing dry facts… The interacting part was more complicated to do but was good because it made the stories more alive and gave them more action.

Since I like the variety of things, I do like this history class and hope it will continue that way.

Learner #6
Good: It was a new experience for me since I was used to textbooks and writing on paper. I liked the fact that I could edit my work. Most of the time, I end up using so much white out that I start over several times. I hate wasting paper. I also liked the fact that I could read what other people were writing about. At times I wasn’t sure if I was doing it correctly but I could read other classmate’s work and compare.
I also liked that you gave us time in class to work because writing 500+ words every night is not easy.

Improve: Definitely the feedback needs work. “It was good” is not feedback and it didn’t help at all. At least pick out the grammar mistakes.. because I saw TONS of grammar mistakes and everyone’s feedback was “I liked your story”.
I don’t think you gave us enough time. It was hard for me to write all the diaries by next class. Reading takes me a while and even longer to understand what it says. I can’t just skim through it, so it would have been nicer if you have us more time to finish the assignment.

Get rid of: Interacting with others. It was so hard to put them in my diary. I didn’t know how to talk with them. Most of the time it was really pointless. I understood their lifestyle better by reading the Lectures more than by reading other people’s diaries.

Overall, I like this kind of work. I like the being creative / imaginative thing. It was fun, but I just think that 500+ words was a lot. After reading all the lectures and writing the diaries and then hearing your “lecture”, I felt that I knew all the information for the essay and I understood everything.. I didn’t just memorize facts.

Mr. B’s response:
I agree with most of what you say. I’m seeing a lot as I grade that will help me make an improved “2.0″ version next time around.

Thanks for the effort on this. It’s noted.

Learner #7

I like using the wiki’s. They are easy to use and they are much faster to do because my typing is faster than handwriting. It wasn’t very difficult to use and because we didn’t run into much problems, it was better to use than just paper and pencil. I liked having an “online textbook” where we had what we needed to know on the website.We didn’t have to bring any textbooks home and we could get the reading where ever there was a computer with internet. It was very convenient for me.

Something that i think we should change is reading and using the textbook these days. We can’t annotate, we have to carry a big book home, and we can’t access it as much as we can when we were doing online textbooks. Also, during the ant-farm diaries, although I had fun with it, I don’t think it was fair to hurt another person or another person’s property permanently because the other person had to change their idea just because of one person’s decision. I noticed that people were burning other people’s houses for fun rather than for the assignment (I did it myself) and it made the assignment seem more like a joke than students doing an assignment. I think we should get rid of the idea of giving students the power to give permanent damage to other students. Overall, it was better than I expected. The permanent damage to other students were not really that bad and it went nearly perfect. I wouldn’t mind doing the same assignment for the industrial revolution.

I think we should do more wiki assignments. Its much better than doing some section review with a paper and a pencil to forget for the rest of the unit. I liked having our own space to do almost anything we want on a whole page. It gave us a lot of freedom to put more and more stuff.

Mr. B’s Response:
This is very good feedback–thank you.

There is an Industrial Rev ant farm project already made by another teacher (Mr. Spivey and I made up the French Rev one ourselves).

I’ll give it a look. Maybe a shorter version, because I really want you all to experience actually writing a history of something you’re interested in.

Thanks for the input! And for teaching me about the problem with destruction of other characters’ property. The assignment DID specify not to do anything for mere silliness, so people will see points off if they ignored that.

Learner #8:
Good

selecting word choices, grammar, spellings have improved(our writing skills have improved)
we get to compare our work with others, kind of competing. (it’s good to compete with others. I read other people’s AAR and I saw someone’s opinion that said showing the grade was bad. But I disagree. If he or she had worked hard on the project, the person would’ve gotten a good grade. I know that this point of view usually comes from the people who got a good grade. But let’s think about this. If the person had worked hard on it and got a satisfiable grade would the person complain about it? No. I worked hard on the project, not only to get a good grade but also I knew that people will see how good(like my writing skills, how hard I worked) I am as a student. So showing the grade doesn’t really matter I think.
we didn’t have to write it on a piece of paper which would have taken a long time

Bad

Our class became perplexed(some got mad) when you just gave instructions for a certain task and not the goal of doing it. For example, at the very first time we summarized “The origin of the French Revolution” in class. You just said to summarized it and eventually you deleted the whole thing at the end. (I don’t remember this event clearly because it was long time ago)
You sometimes require too much work from us, as someone have mentioned in previous AAR. I remember when you told us to write 2 diaries until the next class. It was too much. I know that you push kids( I don’t mean that it’s bad) but I think it’s not a good idea to do something like this.
The feedback didn’t really help. Everybody just said “Nice work” “Good job” There was no criticism.

Mr. B’s Response:
Now here’s my response:
1. Sorry about the unclear instructions on that summary thing. “Learning is messy.” I’ll try to do better. (But you all did overcome it.)
2. 2 diaries for hw too much: got it. Now I know.
3. Feeback will be reflected in grade. Why didn’t any students mention this as it was going on? That’s one of MY frustrations with students at this school. All year I’ve been saying “communicate, speak,” etc. Not a word. Please do your part to maximize your learning experiences too!

Learner #9:
Good

well, what I really think was good was that it was NEW, and it was fun to be able to think like a person during the French Revolution and write a diary as if I was actually going through one of the famous historical events. something good was that we had a lecture at the end. In the beginning, I thought I liked the old way better, but after actually going through the French Revolution myself and learning it again I changed my mind because I realized that this way works.

Improvements TT

First of all, I didn’t like the fact that we had to use computer the whole class and write on it… I don’t think using computer itself is not cool, I just think that maybe we could decrease the amount of time we use computer in class. And the homeworks… it was too much… I was dreading everynight to write those wiki diaries…

Disappear!!

um… not much of what should go… but maybe making the character contact with different characters from EACH estate should go away… I couldn’t possibly make the story flow with so many other characters in my diary, so I just used one..sobsobsob…

Mr. B’s Response:

Thanks for the great feedback. I agree with everything you said and will make those changes next time

I really appreciate the thought you put into this. Thanks again.

Learner #10:
Good

- Each of us had a character had fun creating its characteristics. This project was very creative and good idea for students to have fun and study the history. It made us to require historical facts because without reading history, we were not able write the diaries.

- It was a good idea to use “ant farm.” It was very interesting to put other characters in my diaries and see how the other characters described my character. We linked the others’ diaries so that we could travel the ant farm.

- I felt natural and easy because the writings were diaries. It was easy to show the character’s inner most feelings and express her personality.

Improvements

- We had too little time to do this project. Two diaries in one class were too much for us. Maybe we could make it one diary per class.

- It would have been more fun if we had more connections to other characters before we wrote the diaries. Like, we should have divided the class into 3 or 4 for one diary and make up a main event that includes all of the members in each group. That way we could meet everyone and have common events in the diaries. The audience would be more interested to see how characters connected.

- I wanted to be different characters. I especially wanted to be the executioner or the lower classes so it would be better if we could have change roles.

Bad

- The comments weren’t so much helpful. People weren’t criticizing and giving advice. Instead, they just said “good job” or “keep it up!” I mean, it is good to encourage other people’s work but there is no point if they don’t criticize what others are doing.

- I thought that there should be more foreigners if it was required to meet at least one foreigner for everyone’s dairy. People started to put British journalist everywhere because of the requirement.

- The time of events went too fast in only 5 diaries. My diary skips 20 years. Maybe this project is good to do part of the French Revolution.

Mr. B’s Response:
I like this especially (and everything else you said–thanks for the great feedback )

- I wanted to be different characters. I especially wanted to be the executioner or the lower classes so it would be better if we could have change roles.

Learner #11:

Something that was good

We were able to edit our writings whenever we wanted to edit.
Our homework was written down clearly

Something that could be improved

Proper feedbacks (sometimes there are short meaningless ones)
Whenever teacher writes the grade in reply, everybody can see my grade.

Something that should go

So far nothing should go, but we need a little changes

Mr. B’s Response:
Right on all points.

The “public” feedback was a decision I made to wake up those who didn’t put enough effort (or time management) into the assignment. I won’t always do that.

So was this a good way to do history, if those improvements were made? Did it help you to learn the FR and feel it, instead of just memorize? Was it better or worse compared to traditional class-work?

Learner #12:

GOOD

This was a very different type of homework for me. It was a great way of learning about the events of the French Revolution because it wasn’t just a boring homework reading the text book.

I had to use my imaginations and had to research a lot about the events in order to write a diary with my character. So writing the Antfarm diaries was a very fun and effective.

IMPROVE

However, it took very long to write two diaries for the next lesson. To research all the information and the facts was time-consuming and a hard task. Writing the diaries was a great way of learning about the French Revolution and not forgetting about it. However, it took a long time. I think next time we could write one diary of about 500-600 words. This would make us take more time in the research and understand the event, rather than rush through the information so that we could finish the homework.

BAD

I was only one character throughout the French Revolution unit. This was good in a way, because I was able imagine all the events as though I was that person. However, I only thought from the third estate’s view point. It would have been more challenging and interesting if we could be about four characters, each from the different estates and a foreigner. This way we could learn about all these three characters and their view of the French Revolution.

Mr. B’s Response:
I hear you. Great points I won’t forget next time.
——-

Postscript: There you have it. I wish I had more time to reflect, but I’m a very busy teacher. The bold print emphasis I added to each student’s feedback is as much time as I can give (and actually speaks volumes that I don’t need to spell out, I hope). I’ll leave it to the non-teachers to mine it in more formal theorizing (and please let me know if you do so I can read it!).