Wiki Writing

Why Wiki?

I've found it difficult to have students work on their writing with technology because it:

A: Needs feedback

B: Is kind of lame

In class last week, we talked about collaboration tools and one of them was making a wiki. This lead to some research. The article I read focused on writing a wiki as a class. The assignment was to keep a wiki over the course of the semester and post 47 things. The study found that students who kept up with the wiki and made more edits did better on the final exam. The argument was that the students had more interest in writing and therefore were more engaged in learning about it. It was found that students were interested in what other students wrote and wrote better for their own assignments. There isn't a link between wikis and better writing, but it shows a link between interest and being a better writer.

Nakamaru, S. (2012). Investment and Return: Wiki Engagement in a "Remedial" ESL Writing Course. Journal Of Research On Technology In Education, 44(4), 273-291.

The general idea is this: Have students create an article, read and comment on other articles, revise, teacher comments, final draft.

Sites

I found Wikispaces good because it has no adds and has a bulk user creator. It also has a really good system for making comments. You can also change the permissions on the page as well. The draw backs are is that it looks kind of bland and there are no ways to change that unless you pay. It is also a little bit of work to set up users (but this gives you a good deal of control, including setting passwords.).

The other site is I tried was Wikia. The benefits are that the design has more customization and anyone who knows it exists can then contribute to the article (it sends an email when someone does.) The disadvantages are that there are lots of advertisements and no system for making comments outside of altering the actual text. Security is also an issue because anyone can write on it (makes it easy to set up though). Navigation is strange and hard to find things you wrote.

The Assignment

Create a narrative essay. The story is a personal or made up story.  Collect your stories by your country of origin. Write the essay on a wiki page, comment on other student articles, and revise work.

The wikispace page.

The wikia page. Feel free to contribute to this! Add your country by adding a page and write your narrative.

Reflection and Potential Uses

What is great about this is you can have the whole set of directions available. It is also nice because you can model what you want done in class (for instance, we commented on an essay by an old student) and have them explore on their own.

It is also really neat to see the articles and comments pop up. You'd be surprised what your students can create in a short time.

What is also neat is that students can have this for ever.

Finally, this could be an interesting way to not only do narratives, but many different types of essays, summaries, news reporting, classroom study guides, really anything. The idea is they work together to collect the parts of the whole and comment on each other's work.

Note Taking

As I was in class this week, I realized that I just ask my students to take notes without ever really explaining how to do that.

I think I've left that skill to other people or specific classes that have it in the objectives.  The problem is that students fall through the cracks, just started studying that month, or never learned it well.

So for this week I'm writing a guide to note taking.

Click here to see the guide.

Here is a document for hand outs or whatever.

Here is an example of how to take notes as well.

Bad Presentations

I'm trying to be a better presenter and making better presentations. Going to blog about it this week.

It started when I was watching some student presentations. I noticed that my ESL students truly crutch on reading a Power Point word for word. I also noticed some major word and color fouls. Then there was the questions of plagiarism (yikes!). While I try to stick to these rules, that doesn't seem to work for my students. They need some explicit instruction if I am going to allow them (optionally or otherwise) to use a presentation tool in class.

So this week I made a presentation on my presentation rules for presentations.




You can find the whole thing here. There is a script to go with the slides as well which you can access through the settings button or by looking at the original.

Now would also be a good time to mention other presentation tools besides Microsoft PowerPoint.
Try making a Prezi, GoogleDocs, Zoho, or something crazy. Click here for a list. I like the online ones because if you are like me, sharing presentations is a big deal.

Some neat presentation tips with a business slant, could easily be adapted to ESL.

Happy presenting!