1001 Flat World Tales seems to reach for the brass ring of collaborative online work. Students in schools from different nations are writing stories, providing feedback, revising their own pieces, conferencing about the project, choosing the best stories, uploading podcasts of their readings, inviting other schools to participate, and setting up a seemingly endless project which they themselves call a historical first. It is very cool for sure and would seem to offer many incentives for students to participate fully and thoughtfully.
In one of the blog pages, a teacher (or was it a student?) makes some comment about how during one Skype call, the line between teachers and students was blurred so that those roles mattered far less than the ideas being shared and debated. I will say that the Wiki itself was a bit hard to navigate and it took me awhile to figure out where the actual stories were. (Turns out the Wiki links to an edublog where the best stories are published. I would have liked to see how the works in progress are managed. Perhaps if I had spent a bit more time I might have found that place.)
In the “rubric,” there is talk of students being evaluated for their own writing and revising, for giving feedback, and for using that feedback. I’m curious how the evaluators kept track of all that for each student. It’s time-consuming enough just to read a student’s paper that’s been printed out and put in my hands. Nevertheless, I can see the merits of a “document” that can be worked in numerous locations and commented on when the reviewer has time, with all the information kept safely in one location with its entire history preserved. Off the top of my head, I could see adapting the 1001 Tales for House on Mango Street where the students are writing their own poetic prose tales linked perhaps through Lovett—“A School on West Paces Ferry!” (Fun!!!) Or perhaps we come up with the name of a street and then the students create stories that might be autobiographically driven and give a sense of the community of students in my classes, their collective experiences and perspectives.
I actually found the first video’s example of planning the camping trip to be enlightening, especially the advantages of the wiki over email. Everyone going to one place to add and manage information. Would work well, for example, with students planning a presentation on chapters of a book. If the students had different jobs they could add their pieces from home. I suppose there’s something primitive about that example because it still has the tasks divided up instead of students bringing their own perspectives and ideas to the SAME task and creating a Wiki that somehow reflects a synthesis of their ideas while also reflecting the process and unique ideas that went into that synthesis. I could see possibilities for a wiki debate.
I’m also curious about somehow using wikis or blogs as part of the interview project or the sophomore honors multi-genre project. For the interview project they could create wiki pages for their different questions and students could contribute their own anecdotes and personal stories and opinions. I wouldn’t want to eliminate the face to face interviews entirely, but I could see this as potentially generating SO much more information for each student to draw on for the papers.
For the multi-genre project the students would still maintain their own pages but they could use them to take notes on the many sources they are using. For example, as they read their novel they could add notes and reflections. Then when they listen to a podcast they could add notes for that source and perhaps link to their notes from the other sources to make connections. When it comes time to outline and write the paper, they could draw on thinking they have already done.
For my “Outside Reading” ongoing projects (20 tasks to choose from, from reading a novel to going back to old favorite children’s novels to watching a great movie to visiting a new place…and then writing a short reflection paper) it might be cool to try having a few of the “sessions” be collaborative (last year, the students worked individually). In other words, a few students could agree to watch a particular movie and they could collaborate on a Wiki page with their reflections, favorite scenes, differing opinions about quality, etc.
Just read Vicki Davis’s blog on Wiki Wiki Teaching. Seems like she was excited about her first foray. I will say I was a bit confused when I clicked on one of the links at the English wiki pages and found myself at CliffsNotes.com. Not interested in debating CliffsNotes. Just wondering about whether we should be aiming for the content to be student produced (or at least repurposed and cited from another source) or whether this brave new world includes linking to whatever gets the job done. I assume, like with everything else, it depends on what the teacher’s goal is. Nevertheless, I like the idea of students collaborating on the review and production of idea and info.
Another spontaneous idea: GRAMMAR! Having students contribute to Wiki pages with their own examples of multi-structure sentences, or even building cool sentences collectively. A page just for sentences using absolute phrases. A page for students to add sentences that have at least three of the grammatical structures we’re studying (eg. Adjective clause, participial phrase, adverb clause). Clearly they could also be collaborating on larger pieces. Could somehow bring the short-short story contest into the 21st century (though I could also see keeping that old school).
I checked out the FHS Wolves Den, which I believe is an English teacher’s wiki space. She seems to be using it as the central place for all of her classroom activities. From handouts to videos her students produced, it’s all there. I like this model. I actually don’t see too many examples of the collaborative aspect to Wiki-ness. What I did find were some pretty cool projects. One required students to produce 1984 inspired videos (not reenactments but stories and montages based on the book’s themes). She gives lots of links to the web and software based resources the students could use to produce their videos. Here’s a link to the assignment. And then I found myself at a link to another project requiring students to use a website called Our Story, which seems to be a timeline based application that allows you to keep track of multiple threads of events over time. Another link took me to an essay organizer hosted on the NCTE website.
Good grief, there are A LOT of tools out there!
