My main concern throughout this process has been the ways in which I am going to use the site. I finally decided how I wanted to use it (or at least one way), and it totally backfired on me.
Since my students have been reading a narrative version of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” in class, I decided to create a link off of the Frontpage where the students could go to collaborate and study the material prior to the test. I posted 20 discussion questions, and I also took some time in class to review with the students how to modify or change the site if they wanted to participate. I guess I underestimated how many of my students were going to use the site. Having worked with seventh graders now for six years, I should have known that the students would wait until the night before the test to login to the wiki site and participate in the discussion. However, I didn’t anticipate having quite so many students interested in checking it out. I know that had I sent home a worksheet with discussion questions for the students to complete voluntarily prior to a test or quiz, there would be very few students who would do the extra work. However, the students were so eager to get on the computer and collaborate with their peers that I didn’t even have one student ask me if they were going to receive credit for the work they had done online. I think that part of it is the novelty of a program like this one. They were doing such a nice job bouncing ideas off of one another and discussing the story. So I was feeling pretty good about things in afternoon soon after school had let out. Things started to change quickly as the night wore on.
I decided to take a break and come back to the wiki a couple hours after, and it was a total disaster. There were so many students on at one time trying to edit the same page that some were getting booted and others were stealing the lock from students who were responding. Some of the students took their time in answering the questions only to have a classmate steal the lock and take over which of course meant that all work completed by that student is gone. I know that it is possible for me to recover most of that work, but it took me quite some time to do so since there were so many students on the site at one time. In fact, I was only adding to the madness by being online. I figured I would just wait until much later in the evening to make any changes. Unfortunately, I have some night owls in seventh grade because they weren’t finished working on the site until close to midnight.
I know that I should be pleased that so many students were interested in using the site, and I certainly am. My only concern and my real source of frustration is the fact that so many of my students were frustrated and disheartened last night. I know that there were several students who wanted to see how the site worked and were interested in trying it out, but they were a bit reluctant. Much like myself initially, they were skeptical about this new medium. I feel like I really had them interested and now I am worried that I have lost them. I know that this site can do a lot of great things for the students and can be a great supplement to classroom instruction; however, I am so frustrated with this first activity. I hate the fact that I stood here in class and really tried to “sell” this program to even my most reluctant students claiming that it was a great way for them to study for the test and collaborate. Now I feel like they are not going to want to try it again. I know my students were upset last night having looked at the comments at the bottom of the page.
I know that I will use the wiki in the future, but I feel as though I am going to have to use it in a different way. This is unfortunate because I like the idea of the students creating something similar to a google doc together. I just don’t know that my students or me for that matter would be on board for this format in the future. The students feel as though they did a lot of work for nothing.
Hey Jenn,
Wow, that sounds extremely frustrating. Perhaps you want to make a different wiki for each class. That’s what I did to control who was changing what. I only give access to change that wiki to kids in that section, but they are all connected on the sidebar.
My kids made their pages today for research. They are typing in outlines. I wanted to try to get other school to comment, but I think you have to have a pbwiki account to comment. Is there any chance you could spare a half a period and have your students read our pages? I know that’s a burden, so if you’re pushed for time, you won’t break my heart if you say no. But I thought I’d ask anyway. Ideally, I’d like other schools just to read my students’ research and leave comments (watch this movie, read this book, I heard this, wow, that’s terrible, etc.) It could be any time between now and end of April. Let me know if you’re interested.
I showed my kids your pages today-they laughed at “oh no, I forgot my rough draft!” See you Monday.