Wiki Project - First day, part 1

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 templates until after I was done - grr...).

A greater cause of my nervousness, though, was the simple fact that I've never done anything like this before. I'm giving up a lot of control, and that is not easy for me.

So, this morning I arranged my cooperative teams, sent them to the site, and got them logged on.

First Period: So far, so good. We got online with few problems beyond the usual fat-fingering of passwords. They seem to grasp the basics of what I want. I still have a few caveats, though.

1. We only have a little bit of time to actually start on the assignments after setting up. This is not enough to see if they really grasp the idea. I'll have to keep an eye on them tomorrow, and coach as needed.
2. It's first period, which means they are still asleep (we start at 7:05 AM). The real test will be fifth and sixth periods.

More later...