I am grateful for feedback that I receive through comments from my colleagues. I wanted my students to work on creating their own working dictionaries, and Tsenala gave me a great suggestion of further integrating technology! I am shifting directions on this a little bit to think about the different web 2.0 technology ideas that I could use for students to record their new vocabulary. A wiki would be a good idea, as the class could make a large dictionary accessible by all. A blog might also be a good idea, but maybe less cooperative than a wiki. I am not too confident with my “wiki skills” at this point, but it looks like I will be getting some more wiki experience this week through my Walden application, so that will be helpful. If I choose to use a blog, I might enlist the help of the English teacher on my 10th grade team, as he mentioned earlier that he was toying with the idea of using student blogs for journaling. So in essence, the new questions that have arisen in this arena are: Which technology would work best for my purpose? and What are the logistics involved in making this work?
For my second goal, I have done some more work on my website by adding learning targets for each class section and also a section for assignments. I uploaded the project information for the current assignment that my Spanish C class is working on, including the schedule of presentations, so that if students forget, they can reference the website. And lets talk about stupid errors! As a colleague was perusing my website, they noticed that my email address was posted incorrectly! Well, maybe I was so concerned with making sure that my website was ascetically pleasing that I neglected the basics. So hopefully this will improve communication between my school community and myself :)
I’m glad my comments were helpful! I used a wiki for a collaborative project last year for the first time. My twelfth grade English (as a foreign language) students created a study guide for a collection of short stories which make up their main English exam material. My experience confirmed for me the idea that wikis are great for collectively creating, editing, and developing resources (like a study guide or dictionary). When students create their own resources instead of simply looking them up, they are much more involved with the material and the learning process gains depth and meaning. Logistically I had to ensure that every student had access to the internet; thankfully we had just gotten our library computers up and running for student use. The wiki work my students carried out was done independently outside of class. I set specific due dates and coordinated who should publish to which themes for which stories. They worked in small teams and alternated the roles of first publisher, reviser, and editor. I also instructed them to use the discussion tabs (in the target language!) to organize, clarify, and problem solve. I used a rubric to communicate my expectations and give the students a clear path forward; the history tab was immensely helpful in assessing student participation and performance. If you have a computer lab available to work with your students in a whole class setting, great! This will be terrific support as they become familiar with the technology and the task. However, if you do not have a computer lab available (or only rarely have access), this needn’t be a limiting factor, as wikis are great communication platforms. Good luck!
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