Evaluating Your GAME Plan Progress

I played around with wikispaces a lot over the past few days. I made myself 2 wikis just to get a feel of what I might use. I made one for this Walden class, and then another one using a free 30 day trial of an educator account. I know my school wouldn’t purchase the educator’s subscription off the bat, but maybe if I make a sample page and show them the possibilities they might consider it. I was concerned that my students would need to have email addresses to write on my wikipage, but I found a way around that. I added 3 fake students using their first name as their username and also as their password. This will make it easy to remember for both of us if there is a problem. I’m thinking of using this wiki idea with our Explorers unit next year. This year we’re trying a webquest, which I was initially excited about. After going through it with my students however, I’m not as impressed as I thought I was with the particular site. I still need to play around more with the wiki. It is taking me awhile to make sample pages, look at them from a student’s point of view, and then think how I can logistically expect nine and ten year olds to complete the tasks. I think that my original plan will still work, I just need to practice myself more so that I am comfortable with everything. Making the wiki has been relatively simple, it is the “teacher stuff” that is taking me awhile.

Monitoring my GAME plan

After doing some more research and comparisons, and LARGELY by Phil Bonus’ assistance (thanks Phil!) I have decided to use wikispaces for my class wiki project. My own experience helped me to eliminate pbwiki as a contender and then the comparison tool from teachersfirst helped me to see the pros and cons between wikispaces and wetpaint. I was leaning towards wikispaces, but still unsure when luckily Phil posted about his experiences with both. While I don’t think it would have been a disaster if I picked the other choice, I am glad that I spoke to someone else who actually used them with students. I now need to re-read the chapter about wikis in my Walden text Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts by Will Richardson. That is one of the best textbooks I’ve ever read, it isn’t dry and difficult to understand like most others. I found his classroom examples very helpful. I need to now set up a fake wiki and test it out in school. I want to make sure the sites are not blocked at school, that my students don’t need email accounts, and the look is as I want it. Now if only I could find time in the school day to do this….

GAME Plan thoughts

To get my GAME plan in gear, I need to research free wikispaces for students, first of all. I found this great “wiki walk through” http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/ on Teachers First website that goes through 3 main free wikisites: pbwiki, wikispaces, and WetPaint. I’ve used the first before in a grad class and didn’t much like the look of it, I also see my students having a bit of trouble with it. I need to use the comparison tool on Teachers First to decide between the other two and pick one to use. After that, I think that I should share my intentions with both the computer teacher and principal. I already have a class blog, and use it with no trouble, but I always like to run new technology by the administration (one, so they understand it, and two [honestly] to show that I know how to use this technology and it would be great to use with other classes). Being that I would use this wiki for a project in my next year’s class (since I already blew the first application of the birthstone project) I have a lot of time to play around and make a fake wiki. I always test out new technology before showing it to my students so I can get a feel for any difficulties they might run into. I think I will make a fake wiki on a simple topic (one of my favorites is my dog Lily) so that my students can see what their wiki page might look and feel like.

NETS-T

After reading the National Education Standards for Teachers I believe that I exhibit all five indicators with varying strengths. Two of the standards that seem to be my continuous goal however are designing and developing new experiences and facilitating my students’ creative learning. I feel that these standards tie together and would seamlessly integrate into a GAME plan.

I have done many digital projects with my students and my peers over the years with different success rates. Something that I have never done with my class, but have done on my own within Walden University is creating a wiki. I would very much like to try and create such an interactive learning experience. Recently, to culminate our Rocks and Minerals unit, I gave my students the optional project of doing a Birthstone Report. If they desired, individual students could research their birthstone using pre-evaluated website links I gave them and describe their birthstone using various classifications that we studied in class (hardness, transparency, value, location, etc). The students then typed or wrote their findings onto a poster and presented it to the class. Out of twenty-five students, only four chose to do this. I believe that if I had made this into a wiki project, many more students would have participated. By opening the project up to inspire collaboration and creative thinking, I could have had students born in the same month work together and post pictures as well as textual information about their birthstone.


To monitor my progress in this area, I would constantly check in with my students to see their work. I would provide time in class for my students to ask questions and advice from me. As any good teacher knows, modeling is key to success. Since this would be my first wiki project, I would have my class work together to create a sample wiki first so they know how to use the available technology. That way, they could do the birthstone project mostly at home. I would have minilessons as needed to show the class new features on our chosen wiki hosting page and to combat any problems that they might have. At the end of this project, I would evaluate not only my students’ progress but my own. Did I succeed in teaching twenty-five fourth graders how to navigate the web? Were they able to effectively compile research information and choose the most important facts? Were they able to put the information in their own words and properly credit their sources? If so, I know I am on a roll into creating many more collaborative wikis with my students. If not, I would hold a brainstorming session with the class to see if we could figure out how to remedy the situation, and be more prepared for a positive experience in the future.

References
National Education Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_T_Standards_Final.pdf.