You’re reading this blog because I took a five session technology course through the Northern Virginia Writing Project.
Don’t yawn yet! My students are posting to a wiki (a space where you can search through multiple postings and worked on by multiple editors) and Google Docs (a space where several people can collaborate on one article) because of the same course. These are same students who typically don’t have Internet at home, who sometimes show up to my class pecking at keys because they seldom ever saw computers in their home countries. Thanks to the course, I’ve learned several tools which can be helpful for any student. I admit that I’m extra psyched about introducing these tools to students who are typically on the later end of the learning curve with new instructional tools.
So what’s up with the wiki? Well, my students are able to post all sorts of writing about any topic they want on my class wiki. Today was our first experiment. It went surprisingly well. On a large projection screen, I showed them how to log in to their personalized email accounts (which have a heavy filter) at www.gaggle.net. Then I showed them how to use that address to access their documents at Google Docs and also at our own wiki. Check it out at kasun.wikispaces.com.
It took time. Being the Type A that I am, I was frustrated that my students didn’t instantly work through the directions on how to access the documents without my help. By the end of class I was certain they had grown bored of this (largely because I have my own internal pressure cooker set to “high” at all times when students aren’t all engage throughout the classroom). A couple students waited for better than 20 minutes to ask me for help to log in. It was literally zero degrees today outside, and for some reason that made a few students extra late to class, so I also had to deal with them as they came in.
Nonetheless, when I read the short activity evaluation I asked the students to write, I found most of them excited about the applications they had learned. They said they are excited about being able to work on the same document at the same time with Google. They like that they can see my feedback inside the text on the Google Docs as well. They also said they like that other students can read their work on the wiki. One of my least motivated students, who admits that “It feels funny to think,” said that it makes it worth it to work hard to write if other students can see her writing.
Things are still rough and bumpy with our site. I’ll get my other two classes to work on the sites tomorrow as well. For the meantime, I’m excited about introducing technology applications to students who I think deserve them the most.
Entries (RSS)