Staff Development Technology Lesson

April 28, 2009 -
My Staff Development Lesson has been completed and now I'm compiling and summarizing the teacher evaluations and nearly ready to turn it in to Dr. R.

January 21, 2009 -

In preparation for my Staff Development Lesson, I'm working with another teacher to incorporate the use of a class wiki with one of her research/writing projects. I've never actually used wikis with students before and I wanted to get some experience using them before doing a staff development lesson. I also thought it would be great if I had another teacher with me during the staff development who could describe her own experiences using a class wiki. Teachers would likely appreciate hearing from another teacher.

This week, I've been working with the students in Mrs. C's 4th and 5th period classes. I did an orientation of the class wiki where I walked them through the different tabs and functions that were available. A few of the students had used wikis before, but most had not. All of the students knew about Wikipedia, though. So, that was a great lead in for me to describe what a wiki is to them. I told them that it was basically a web page that members can easily edit.

The students seemed interested in this idea because they were going to be individually accountable for their contributions to the group project. Many students complain when they work in groups if someone isn't doing a fair share of work. With the wiki, the teacher can read all the group discussions and read the history to see exactly what each group member contributes.

One of Mrs. C's students exclaimed, "Crap!" when he first heard about this group wiki project. When asked what was wrong, he said, " Well, this is bad for me...but really good for Mrs. C. This is really a very smart way for Mrs. C to monitor our group work. No more sit back group time for me!"