A Teacher’s Thoughts

I just want to get moving…I have heard this several times lately from teachers involved in the KMS Bloggers project. Certainly this is no surprise. When we as teachers are engaged and learning it is only natural (and professional) for us to want to leverage those new ideas for our students. And what often happens when I jump into something is learning. Granted I have had a rough and tumble lesson on occasion (I recall my first down hill ski run over the headwall on the Narrow Guage at Sugarloaf) but in the end the learning pays off.

Last year I learned about Wikispaces through participation in Classroom 2.0. I immediately recognized the engagement that I could get from students and that the tool could be used for group work. I registered for a teacher account and even had those great Wikispaces guys add all my students for me. I gave the students some quality instruction on the mechanics of our wikispace and how to deal with images. Ready, set, stop…
The first problem…Multiple students (like 10+) trying to edit the same page synchronously. That didn’t work. Changes were lost, students were frustrated.

The next problem…The solution to the first problem. I created a place for them to each have their own section in the wikispace. It seemed logical. It was unlikely that we would have problems with simultaneous editing. And that was that for collaboration. Students used their spaces, some very well. There were great examples of student work. There were accolades for using technology. But the real advantage was lost.

The problem was that I didn’t teach collaboration in any new way. I hadn’t taught it in a new way because I didn’t yet see it in a new way myself. Within the model I was teaching, I had good instruction, good classroom practices. For me, collaboration was still group work. Students did work together in my room, some very well. Groups conducted self-designed lab investigations and published the information on their pages. So while group work happened, there was no building of collaborative knowledge. I was using a cool new tool with out of date pedagogy.

Would I have discovered this if I hadn’t started the wiki? Would I have learned the differences between collaboration and group work? Had I not dove in head first the answer would be no.

Had I not used the wiki the first time, I suppose I would not have come to these conclusions and would not likely be blogging now for that matter. The lesson then came after the fact. Learning still happened. But could it have been better?