This week in class, we discussed wikis and podcasts. I new the basics of both of these before, but I had never thought about how to use them in the classroom.
My brother set up a
wiki for our family to use as a way to record our immediate family's history. We add to it when we have time. Once my sister's friend used it to do an assignment, but mostly it is full of inside jokes and boring facts. It looks almost exactly the same as Wikipedia, but I suspect that was so my parents wouldn't get confused. I have added to it several times and am starting to understand the HTML language used in the editing process.
My experience with podcasts is somewhat more lacking. I have never had an ipod so I never took the time to look into anything involving the word 'pod', but as we learned in class, it doesn't have to involve an ipod at all. When my sister was overwhelmingly obsessed with Harry Potter fandom, I heard a few of their podcasts streaming from the website. Thus reveling to me the fact that podcast were basically just audio files (unless it is a video podcast, then it is of course a video file).
Still, knowing all of this, I had never seen nor heard of a teacher using such a thing. But oh how instructional technology 4010 has opened my mind. Wikis are a fabulous way to get students involved with their education. They give them the oppurtunity to add their own ideas and design how they learn. Almost all the students I will be working with will have grown up with access to a computer, so using technology should be given in my classroom. And wikis on the internet can be viewed and edited by students anywhere they go. (Although, puting student information on an intranet is probably safer and more likely to be deemed acceptable by school administration.)
Wikis give students the oppurtunity to learn more than they would have if they had worked alone. Everyone can bring their own idea and share it so that the bit of knowledge they bring in will spread to the other students. Instead of leaving with one fact from one source, even if it is a very good source like the teacher, they will have 30 facts from as many sources.
Students learn more when they have a say in what they learn and when they have the oppurtunity to teach it to others. Podcasts can provide this very thing. If students can make a video, they will be much more likely to work hard and learn more so that the recording will not make them look bad. (I know, it isn't a very good reason to work hard, but sometimes, that's what it takes.)
When I was in seventh grade, we had to write and perform a radio play, complete with sound effects and commercials. Podcasting these would have motivated me to work harder on the assignment. Teachers could use this idea to see what students learned. They could use podcasts to provide evidence of their learning at the end of each month, or whenever. Wikis can provide another outlet for their creative minds, allowing them to make their own page, edit a group project, or comment on someone else's work. The possibilities feel like they go on and on.
As a side note, if I had a student who couldn't focus with out doing something with his hands, I would teach him to take notes or give him a stress ball to hold so that he could learn. I would not simply ingnore the fact that technology made him ADHD and let him sit there and struggle. Just so you know.
