Well, I’m still getting used to blogging. I am not the best
writer so every week I have to mentally prepare myself to sit down and clear my
mind before I work on an entry. I have
to say, at first I didn’t like having to write about a specific topic each
week. But now that I am in charge of
deciding my own subject matter, I am stuck!
I am still getting used to how to get my thoughts down on paper (so to
speak) and working on not rambling on (which I do often). So far this semester, we have learned a ton
about wikis, podcasts, videos and blogs.
It’s actually been pretty interesting.
My biggest problem in this program since the beginning has been finding
ways to implement these cool technologies in a classroom full of five year
olds. Their skills are limited since
most of them can’t read and write independently yet. I just created a lesson plan using wikis that
I think actually came out pretty good. I
tried to find ways to let my students participate as much as possible but I
think it’s a good starter lesson for teaching the kids how wikis work. The authentic problem is that the local
library wants to create a community wiki that allows kids to share their
favorite stories. My students will
choose stories they enjoy and practice retelling and creating a summary using
beginning, middle and end. The students
then have the chance to help create the wiki by typing in the title of the
book, their name and as much of the summary as they can handle. Then the wiki can be edited and shared by
members of the community so any local student can share their favorite stories
as well. The wiki can be used by the
library when people want recommendations for good children’s books. It would be awesome to actually contact the
local library and see if it they’d like to actually do something like
this. It would encourage other schools
and classrooms to try using wikis with their classes as well. I think this would give my students a good
idea of what a wiki is and how it was used and it would be a good way to gradually
integrate wikis into our curriculum in a way that is accessible to the younger
students.
I like this idea. Maybe you could have the students illustrate the stories and scan them into the wiki since they can't 'write' the story. Or maybe you could have the kids make their own stories that are illustrated and recorded so the students could navigate through the wiki listening and reading the pictures of their classmates stories. Might be a bit labor intensive to get it up and running, but I can see it working, putting a picture of each student (as a link) to their lists of stories over the course of the year. I really like that, I think I am going to make a similar recommendation to my 1st and K teams, they have talked about doing something similar for a few year, perhaps the wiki environment has the best affordance for this!
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful idea to use a wiki! My students are in first grade and therefore, I also struggle with planning and executing lessons integrating technology that won't take up too much time for my students to do. I discovered a Canadian first grade teacher who uses wikis to help students learn about traditions, diversity, and the alphabet. In case you're interested, her name is Ms. Cassidy.
ReplyDeleteI could see this type of wiki working in my classroom and it would be a great chance for students to see telecommunication in action at such a young age if more then one class took part in it. Maybe each teacher who was taking part in the wiki could create a page for thier students then all te classes could see whatother s (even outside thier school) are reading and enjoying!
ReplyDeleteScanning the stories is a wonderful idea. In my class I had the kids scan their stories using one of the old large scanners. Then I had them embed the images into PowerPoint. Once embed into PowerPoint we were able to remove the slides as they became full pages and the finished product was a digital book. I think you idea is fantastic.
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