WIKI Unit

As I have now done a few years in a row, I will be doing the WIKI unit again.  The idea is simple: the students will use our WIKI server (MediaWIKI) to create a WIKI page. They are put into groups of four to five and will work collaboratively on a WIKI about one of five topics that come out of Chapter 12 in the BC Science8 chapter. For example, one deals with ocean pollution, one with freshwater, etc.

Students were given an assessment page that explained to them exactly what I am looking for them to do, both individually and as a group.

My biggest concern right now is simply dealing with my server: it seems to not be super fast and bottlenecks a bit at times. This creates issues with access to the WIKI at times and students have to refresh the page. This is annoying and can contribute to the successfulness of the unit itself. Time to put on my "techie" hat and take a look at it tomorrow.

However, as a tool, the WIKI is fantastic and does do what I envision it doing: it gives a group of students the ability to truly collaborate on the WIKI page and make something that is better than any one student would be able to do on their own. However, each student is marked on their own ability and contributions to the page on a whole. This is an important part to the success of this: historically, students hate group work because they feel that they will be assessed as a group and, thus, one student can bring their mark down (or visa versa I guess). The WIKI makes this a non-issue (this year, no student mentioned this as an issue, something the first year group did mention as a problem).

Finally, this year should be the year the study which deals with the WIKI (which I now did two years ago) will be published! I am so excited for this! In the meantime, the journal that my hopes rest on (The Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology  - www.cjlt.ca) is a great online journal with many good articles. For those reading this, there is a great resource for you all to read anyway.

Part 2 of the Freedom Post - How did they do?

No lie here, the students in my Grade 8 Science class did not complete this assignment perfectly the first time around. Here are a few observations:

1. I found that students worked together and looked like they simply "copied" drawings one from the other. Either I do not allow them to work together, or I watch much closer to see if they are drawing it on their own. However, I do think that the collaborative work is beneficial if they come to the right conclusions, of which most did not it seemed.
2. Students seem to have the right definitions, but could not translate the definition into the drawing correctly. Thus, they would need more time to truly understand what the definition really meant.

My plan is a simple one: give them back and have them correct them and then hand it in.

The issues above might be corrected if a) students were not working on this assignment all a the same time, and b) weren't all asked to do the same thing! Perhaps, as my previous posts alluded to, if students were able to simply show me that they knew it but were not asked to draw it, I might get better results. Also, the hand in / assess / hand back / correct scenario might be how this type of assignment would have to go: I should not be looking for perfection the first time - how would student's learn if they were not able to try and fix?