Matt Richardson's Blog (5)

OK, so, my plan was to blog daily about my wiki project. Then the avalanche of crap that is the end of the first marking period came down on me. Something had to give, and the blog was it.



Anyway, here's how it went:



My big mistake was to give insufficiently specific instructions when it came to writing the articles. After two days, none of my groups were done, so I forced the issue. On the third day, I had each group send me a message stating which member of the group was… Continue

I guess I should write up a brief description of this project, especially if I'm going to blog about it!



The major concept is that students will take on the role of newspaper reporters, and write articles about a given area of World History (I chose Ancient Rome for this first project). They will do their own research, and publish their articles on a wiki. I came up with 35 different articles that students could write about, and created wiki pages for each of them. Students work in… Continue

My impressions from the rest of the day:



By 3rd period, the kids had discovered the mail function. This was no surprise, as those kids are particularly social. No big deal, I'll just have to keep an eye on them to make sure they're getting their tasks done.



My 5th period has a few groups that are really struggling with the overall concept of the project. Some of this may be due to the higher percentage of ESOL students, but I don't think that accounts for it entirely. I may… Continue

Low-grade panic pretty well described my mood over the last few days.



My plan was to start a new project with my classes today. The idea was to create a wiki about Ancient Rome. Students would pretend to be newspaper reporters, and compose their stories on thew wiki.



The panic came from, first of all, the sheer size of the task of setting up the wiki pages for each assignment. I have 35 or so assignments, and each needs it's own page (of course, I didn't discover Wikispace's… Continue

Hello, everyone! I found this community via Steve Hardagon's blog. I'll be using this blog to knock ideas about, and to learn from the community. Looking forward to "meeting" you all!

Matt