This Wiki Stuff Gets Easier and Easier

Confession: I’m behind in my unit planning for history. I’m doing too much administrative stuff to stay abreast of my course-work.

But an interesting thing just happened. Faced with a history class in 2 hours and no unit plan for World War I to World War II, I found myself setting up a new Wikispace–”A Broken World“–and designing a project for a student-created online textbook, complete with embedded student video lectures and Skypecast interviews with academic experts–and it took me all of 30 minutes.

I really think that this project will be self-sustaining for the next three weeks or so, requiring little further planning for me.

I also think the students will learn much more, and enjoy that learning more as well, than if I had created discrete lessons for the whole unit.

This is only my third or fourth wiki project. The French Revolution Wikipedia and Ant Farm Diaries was, judging by student feedback, a success–but an imperfect and exhausting one for us all. The 1000 Flat World Tales creative writing workshop for my English class has also been engaging for students and teachers, but again, high-maintenance (we’re working those bugs out, though).

But this online textbook wiki? It seems like a new plateau in simplicity and design. I hope I’m not deceived. Take a snoop and tell me what you think–and steal at will (though be a nice thief and let me know how things go, and any improvements you make).

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

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Written by Clay Burell

March 22nd, 2007 at 5:05 pm

Posted in history, project-based learning, teaching, web2.0, wiki, writing

Tagged with collaboration, history, information literacy, literacy, multimedia, podcasting, reading, research, student 2.0, teaching, textbooks, video, web 2.0/ read-write web, wiki

4 Responses to 'This Wiki Stuff Gets Easier and Easier'

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Hmmm…so you’re telling us that you set up the framework and now the students will be doing the learning work? How very 21st century of you!

[Reply]

Diane

22 Mar 07 at 7:06 pm
Very nice …I will be sharing this as part of my textbook discussion. I will probably borrow it too and as we “mix and remix” we may have a kind of template that will serve many classes.

On another subject to further extend the blog conversation if you have not done so you may want to look at these to articles by Jeff…
I can’t seem yo get the link yo work in the comment but here is the url for the article which also has a link to the first article-
http://www.techlearning.com/blog/
2007/03/a_problem_with_blogs_contd.php

They raise an interesting perspective on blogs as conversations. Something I actually have been thinking about.

[Reply]

Barbara

23 Mar 07 at 9:01 am
[...] companion blog: This unit was a collaboration only between my two world history classes. As this thinkaloud explains, it took minimal planning and labor due to its simplicity: students adapted their paper [...]

A Short, Strange Trip into the 21st Century, Part 1 (guest post by Clay Burell) » Moving at the Speed of Creativity

1 Mar 08 at 9:48 pm
Please congratulate your students on a great piece of work.

[Reply]

Enda

15 May 08 at 12:17 am