AlR

Lesson 2 homework

http://iaspace.pbwiki.com/FrontPage - This space was created by a former PBworks mentor and features one of my favorite projects of all time!

• What is the purpose of this workspace? What project will students complete on this workspace?

  The workspace provides a place for students to publish information they have collected.  This project may generate more interest by permitting the students to share the information in the form of a Facebook like profile for significant individuals and also countries.

   

• How did they incorporate research and collaboration? (Please note the use of footnotes, an important PBworks plugin)

  Each teacher provided a rubric with expectations about the quality and variety of resources.  The students collected facts and also multimedia to describe their person, historical period, or country.  The students provide a works consulted at the end of their page.  [I did not see on the pages the footnotes plugin. Where am I missing it?]

   

• Were the directions clear for students?

  Directions were clear for the students.  The teachers included examples and also rubrics to guide the student products.

   

• How could you better organize this space? I would use folders for each teacher, perhaps with the name of the projects, like "decades," "presidents," etc. Then the student pages would be more easily found through navigation rather than scrolling the page to find where the teacher had linked the student poject pages.

 

http://eagleswrite.pbworks.com/ 

• Is this site collaborative or instructional?

  The site is instructional and collaborative.  One page had a nifty classtools venn diagram plugin for pre-writing a comparison. The wiki provides a chance for two schools to share information.  It looks like most pages are for individuals publishing.

• How are students collaborating, or supporting each other's work?

  I did not see as much collaboration as opportunity to support through posting of comments.  After viewing a video, one school posted questions that were answered through comments onthe page.

• How is this site structured so you can find what you're looking for?

  Much better use of folders on this site to organize pages.  This makes the site more usable and easily browsed.

(Hint: Please look in the PDS folder to see student work)

 

Lesson 1 Homework

 

http://mrboyersclass.pbworks.com/

 

The wiki here seems more instructive than collaborative.  Mr Boyer is very engaging, and you see students publishing using wiki pages as Blogs, and the individual student bio pages show student involvement.  We have several teachers who use wikis like this: a a means to showcase individual student work.  I don't see as much collaboration among students on his wiki.

 

http://jepsonroom13.pbworks.com/

It looks like she is starting her students with a new slate.  She provides some direction on how to create a wiki page, clear expectations for the bio assignment, and she also has an expectation for students to comment on the pages of others.  This startss the students interacting on the wiki.

 

She lays out for parents the content of the class, informs them of how the wiki will be used, and definitely lets the parents know that students are responsible for their performance (and she doesn't seem to accept many excuses--love the page that is her stock reply to parent emails).

 

I don't see much here that strikes me as collaborative, though it does seem that she is starting fresh the new year.  Lots of resources for students on tools they can use, including Jing.  The live help page is impressive.

 

http://cappello.pbworks.com/

He is using the wiki to organize the syllabi and homework pages for the various classes he teaches.  This provides students with one location to check for homework, and he does have a few attachments available for download.  I was a bit excited to see "co-operative" featured on his home page, but now I see he also supervises work study. This wiki does not seek to engage students.This is a handy use of a wiki for organizing course materials, and he has organized each homework page, links page, by including each course in its own folder.  The wiki would be helpful for students as a handy online stop for all their assignments.