Wikis in third grade

As part of her required coursework in her masters in IT, the librarian had to create a lesson using Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. The librarian has decided to place the lesson here, with the hope of receiving feedback from others and the possibility of someone utilizing the lesson in their own classroom or library. The lesson is posted first, the comments follow.

Subject area: Language Arts, Technology
Grade level: Third
Lesson title: What is a wiki? Nine-year-olds collaborate to design a definition

Brief lesson description

One of the most notable distinctions of the beginning of the 21st century has been the rapid advance in technology. Internet accessibility for many, mass ownership of personal computers, combined with accessible forums for anyone with a computer to voice an opinion has created a situation where different skills are required for 21st century citizens. Education is slowly beginning to change its delivery to one that is more current with society’s needs. In this lesson, the author aims to change the typical delivery of a lesson from students as recipients of information from an instructor to students who act on the information they experience and collaborate to create a product others can benefit from.
This lesson has many purposes, though the most important one is to prepare students in a third grade class for 21st century online collaboration. The lesson provides hands-on experience with a wiki. Instead of providing a teacher definition, the students themselves will build the definition of a process they will have experienced.
WI State Standard – Learning Target(s) addressed:

3rd Grade Language Arts:

• Organize sentences into paragraphs. Organize paragraphs to build on an idea.
• Revise and edit their writing using proper grammar and spelling.

NETS-S technology standard addressed:
1. Creativity and Innovation: Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology.
2. Communication and Collaboration: Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.
Technology resources needed (hardware and software)
Laptops, internet connection, access to a room at MPS’ Student Learning Community

Procedure:

Hook/Engagement: The teacher shows the class a rectangular cake. She tells the students a person, new to this country and this language, wants to know what “cake” is. The class will have to use words to describe the cake.

Vocabulary: post, edit, save

Focused Instruction “Let me show you something: this is how we can all work together to create a definition of this word.” The teacher has already created a wiki with very basic information such as: “A cake is round.” She promotes a discussion to determine if that sentence tells everything a person needs to know to understand what a cake is. Students who disagree are invited to edit, post, and save their replies. The process of editing and saving gets to be repeated over and over as students change or add responses to the class definition of “cake”.

Guided Practice: “Let’s do it together with different words.” The students work on definitions of “bubble gum, candy bar, goo”. Teacher paces the room and encourages students that are not participating to do so. After the class is finished collaborating on the definitions, the teacher informs the students that the term for what they were doing is a wiki.

Added Vocabulary: wiki

Independent Practice: “Now you try.” Students work on a group definition of a wiki.

Assessment Method: Feedback will be provided in two forms: collectively while the discussion is going on and individually, as the teacher paces the room and provides quick feedback to students that might not be participating or are not encouraging others to participate.
Assessment will consist of teacher notes.

Explanation, purpose, and features

This lesson has many purposes. It has been selected as one step on a continuum to prepare a class of third grade students for online collaboration. The lesson provides hands-on experience with a wiki, a “collaborative workspace where anyone can edit content that has already been published” (Richardson, 2006). Instead of providing a teacher definition, and then practice, the librarian decides to have the students themselves work on a wiki related to terms they know well, then build the wiki’s definition based on their shared experience.
The first lesson begins small and simple: teacher provides modeling of wiki work while the class defines the word “cake”. Students move to guided practice while working in teams to define the words “bubble gum, candy bar, and goo”. This lesson eventually culminates with wiki essentials, as students collaborate online to establish a definition of the word “wiki” based on their experience. Further lessons will promote wiki work as teams develop library terms definitions they will eventually post at the library page (barcode, spine, verso, holds, etc). The goal is that the students will collaborate on book reviews to post at the library room. Lastly, this experience will prepare students to transfer what they have learned to their classroom page, where other subjects such as science, Spanish, social studies, and math will be incorporated.

The librarian in this school has created a room at the district’s student online learning community, which uses Moodle as the course management platform. This room, available only through an enrollment key to the students at her school, has several features that promote online collaboration. Wikis, dictionaries, and forums are available. Unfortunately, blogs are not available at this time to students in this setting. The librarian initially presented this student learning community to two teachers at the school and, after taking all the required coursework necessary to create and maintain these rooms, both teachers have thus created their own classroom online rooms.

Effectiveness of this medium

The school this librarian works for promotes cooperative learning as a way for students to act on the knowledge they acquire. Students are used to working as teams, to collaborate at tables or selected groupings to come to an understanding or create a product. However, although web 2.0 tools, such as wikis, provide more efficient ways to attain this, this school has stayed behind by using 20th century methods such as paper and pencil. It is the librarian’s intention to work with a classroom teacher and the special education teacher to introduce online collaboration to the students. They aim to scaffold the students so they feel comfortable using features of the library’s student learning community room (slc) and then move them over to their classroom room at the slc. They want to tap into the students’ thirst for technology and at the same time get them to experience how students can work together online as teams to create a product useful to others.

Several reasons influenced the librarian’s decision to choose a wiki over a blog. First of all, for reasons no one has been able to explain to the librarian, the district’s student learning community’s set-up does not allow for student blogs. (Teachers can have modified blogs at the teacher learning community.) Since the librarian and the classroom teacher want to provide the students with online practice in a controlled environment, the use of this room, though limited slightly, has been chosen as the route to go. Another reason, expressed previously, is the librarian’s thought that students need to learn how to collaborate online, and a wiki is provides such experience. Lastly, practice with entries similar to blogs can be promoted by the use of forums, something that is easily created at the student learning community rooms.

The use of wikis in the classroom will provide students with opportunities to publish, edit, and revise content, yet a lot more should be happening while this collaboration is going on. Through wiki work, students will learn how to negotiate with others about correctness, relevance, meaning, grammar, and more (Richardson, 2006).

Reflections on the lesson

Before students could work on a wiki, they need to learn how to navigate on the student learning community. Considering that these are students have had very little computer experience, every step to navigating in the room has to be considered. That involves teaching students how to log in and log off, respond to a prompt on a forum, and complete their profile information. The librarian anticipates that before the teachers are finished with the first lesson, some students will have figured out how to send messages to each other, and that is fine. Further lessons will be planned on digital citizenship and staying on task. Table groupings will make managing the groups more efficient, as students will be encouraged to help each other.

This lesson is also teaching the librarian how to work with groups so they will be able to use the library’s page at the Student Learning Community and have a voice. The objective is to begin with the third graders so as they move up in the grades at this elementary school, they will be learning how to “operate in a world where the creating of knowledge and information is more and more becoming a group effort” (Richardson, 2006). The librarian also agrees with Baggetun, in that “blogs and wikis could be one way of nurturing the relationship between schooling and the outside world, and learning as participation, drawing from both spheres in creating richer opportunities for more meaningful learning” (2007).

References:

Baggetun, R. (2007). Emergent web practices and new educational opportunities. Version 0.1-4 Revista Telos: cuadernos de comunicación, tecnología y sociedad. Accessed 3/21/2008 at:
http://www.campusred.net/telos/articulocuaderno.asp?idarticulo=9&rev=67

Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Corwin Press, CA.