Wikis and blogs: your keys to student: collaboration & engagement.
Imperatore, Catherine
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The two most powerful Web 2.0 tools in a career and technical
education (CTE) educator's arsenal are the blog and the wiki. Both
are easy to use and inexpensive, and either resource can turn one
student's assignment into an interactive experience for a class, an
entire school or a cross-global community. Wikis and blogs can
strengthen reading and writing skills and teach students about the new
literacy of the Internet age such as evaluating sources and synthesizing
information, according to Will Richardson, author of Blogs, Wikis,
Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. And with the
proper setup, these tools can still ensure students' online privacy
and safety.
The enthusiasm for Web 2.0 has predated any substantial research on
its effectiveness, but the data is finally catching up. A 2008 study on
the use of Web 2.0 tools by students age 11-16 in and out of school by
Becta (the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency)
found that these resources encourage participation by students who may
be reluctant to speak up in class. In addition, the study concluded that
the 24/7 nature of the online world fosters a continuing conversation
and leads some students to further investigate topics that interest
them. The research also showed that students feel a greater sense of
ownership and pay greater attention to detail when their work will be
published online.
But if wikis and blogs are both easy yet powerful Web 2.0 tools to
implement in the classroom, which should you choose? Their uses do
overlap, but wikis are more focused on collaboration while blogs
encourage engagement.
Collaboration
Wikis are Web sites that allow authorized users to easily add, edit
and delete content. Wikis allow collaboration on a large scale--think
Wikipedia or small--think your classroom.
At its most basic, a wiki is a repository for class documents such
as syllabi or a resource list. To take it up a notch, use a wiki to keep
track of student projects. Each project has its own page where students
can post progress reports and add images, audio and other files. Or make
the project classwide: ask your students to collaborate on a study
guide, a manual, an encyclopedia or a glossary. Culinary students can
help each other improve recipes, IT students can collaborate on
developing source code, and future teachers can work out hypothetical
lesson plans.
For career exploration, students can create a career resources wiki
describing different jobs and the education and training required, as
well as local employment opportunities. Introducing wikis in the
classroom is not without its challenges. "Wikis conflict with
traditional assumptions about authorship and intellectual
property," according to contributors on http://writingwiki.org.
This Web site encourages educators to introduce students to the
conventions of collaborative work, creating a styleguide for the wiki
and discussing how contributors will be recognized.
Engagement
If engagement is more of a priority for your classroom than
collaboration, think blogs. A blog, short for Web log, is a Web page
comprised of chronological entries in which one or more authors share
information and reflections. A classroom may have one blog to which the
entire class publishes entries, usually known as posts, or individual
blogs for each student, or both. Readers can comment on each post,
encouraging audience response and engagement. A good first foray into
blogging is to post an assignment to a classroom blog and direct
students to complete the assignment by responding in the comments
section; for instance, health sciences educators can ask students to
describe the correct procedure for dealing with a particular medical
emergency. But this approach barely scratches the surface of classroom
blogging.
To maximize student engagement, pose a thought-provoking question
you would normally discuss face-to-face and direct students to post
their responses to the class blog or on their individual blogs. Then ask
students to respond to each other's entries. Difficult workplace
scenarios are great conversation-starting topics for CTE classes.
Richardson also proposes having students reflect on assignments or
evaluate you, the educator! Blogs, like wikis, are useful tools for
career exploration. Interns can write weekly about the challenges of
their first workplace, or students can post interviews with career
mentors.
David Warlick, an educator, author, consultant and public speaker
on 21st century teaching and learning, suggests that educators invite
practitioners in the field to comment on students' work. Classroom
blogging presents its own difficulties. Jeff Utecht, an elementary
technology and learning coordinator and consultant, has written on his
Thinking Stick wiki about the challenge of sustained blogging once the
"cool factor" has worn off. When this happens, the quality of
the conversation is likely to suffer. To combat this, Utecht recommends
allowing students class time to read blogs. As he points out, "By
first focusing on the reading and responding to others we help students
to 'listen' in the blogosphere. Just like in real
conversations listening before speaking is a good skill."
Services That Protect Students
Educators implementing Web 2.0 tools in the classroom often run
headlong into issues of student safety and privacy. One way to combat
these issues is to use blog and wiki services designed with classrooms
in mind. Wetpaint, a free wiki service equipped with education-friendly
features, will eliminate advertisements from classroom wikis at your
request. Wetpaint also offers varying levels of privacy to ensure that
unauthorized users cannot view the wiki. But Wetpaint has an age
restriction: students must be at least 13 years old to register. Wikis
at Wikispaces also cater to the education community's needs, and
with no age restriction. The service is giving away 350,000 of its
ad-free and private wikis, a $50 value, to K-12 classrooms (as of the
writing of this article, they had donated 128,000 wikis). Teacher
control of content is easy with either service.
The wiki is open to editing by authorized users only, and revisions
are tracked by user. If inappropriate material is added to a wiki, the
educator will know which user made that revision and can remove the
offending content. Education-focused blogging services also offer
options for protecting students' online activities. Gaggle, which
provides student e-mail and blogs, probably offers the most solid line
of defense. E-mails are automatically monitored for inappropriate
content, while blog security settings allow educators to bar outsider
access, hide e-mail addresses, block offensive content, disable
commenting and more. The free version of Gaggle includes advertising. If
student e-mail is not needed, consider 21Classes. This ad-free service
offers a class homepage as well as blogs for each student. Educators can
moderate student entries and set privacy options to determine who can
view and comment on the blogs. 21Classes is free for up to 50 students.
For You, For the District, For the Globe
Blogs and wikis are also useful resources for educators'
professional development, and they can facilitate communication between
administrators, educators and parents. For instance, a school district
could use a blog to share district news, performance data and goals and
seek feedback from teachers and parents. Blogs and wikis can also have a
global reach: a wiki is the basis for the global Flat Classroom Project.
In 2008, its third year, the Flat Classroom Project included more than
200 students in eight countries collaborating on projects based on
Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat.
Wiki and Blog Services
Wetpaint
www.wetpaint.com/category/Education
Wikispaces
www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers
Gaggle
http://gaggle.net
21Classes
www.21classes.com
Catherine Imperatore is ACTE's electronic media coordinator.
She can be contacted at cimperatore@acteonline.org.
