Help:Bringing classes to EduTechWiki

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Welcome

Teacher's from related fields are encouraged to use this wiki for student writing activities (e.g. in a writing-to-learn perspective). You also can use this wiki as training ground for advanced English teaching (like Sarah Guth).

I may intervene if your students do "wild stuff" like choosing weird title (in this case I'd rename and forward from the old one), delete huge chunks of text by mistake (I will revert to old versions), badly format text (I will add structure to an article), etc.

Below a few things that you should read and understand ... or at least have your students read and understand :)

Also please send Daniel K. Schneider a mail if plan to have your students do more than just reading and editing a few small things.

Wiki culture

There is no such thing as wiki culture. Wiki cultures, power structures and rules can be very different. In particular, this wiki doesn't work like Wikipedia. E.g.

• I (Daniel K. Schneider) own this wiki and I decide, but I am cooperative person ;). I made up the initial rules and of course will adapt them to emerging needs.
• You can express opinions, make speculations, create unfinished stuff without worrying about quality etc. (just try to give the reader an idea of the status of what he is looking at).

I suggest that you tell your students to read:

• Editing rules. Have them respect these more or less (but insist on the three rules below).
• Basic edition. The really ought to know these. In particular, they should understand titles and links. Maybe print out a paper copy this and hand it out.
• Template demo (templates are practical ways to format text or add specially formatted information). Wikipedia has hundreds, we only a few.

Then just let them know that some other person may change what they did. Of course, we all should try the best to make good use of everyone's contribution. In my experience, students have a lot of trouble understanding hypertext and collective knowledge building. Both together can be quite a challenge to teach...

Rules I will enforce

These are simply not negotiable and I may take corrective action ...

(1) Students must have their wiki homepage filled in

They should insert a description of who they are. It can be very short, e.g. something like this:

• Aleperon

Rationale: On the Internet, its important to know who wrote something.

• I also suggest that the login they take is something like "Joe Student". This way it's much easier to express opinions, sign articles etc. They just use the shortcut: "~~~ has the impression that ..."

(2) Within an article, students must use hierarchical titles

E.g. use "=== section title ===" and not " this is bold "

Rationale: Helps user navigation (automatic generation of a TOC)

(3) New Article titles must follow the editing rules, i.e.

• Avoid capital letters (the first letter can be either one, e.g. The example article is the same as the example article but The Example article is not.
• Use singular in general: E.g. pedagogical theory.
• Make them as short as possible

Rationale: Wiki writing is about linking and linking is easier if you just can insert the title of an article in a phrase.

Some other remarks

It's probably a good idea (also for the wiki as a whole) that students understand that this wiki is an organized knowledge space (not just a collection of isolated articles). You may spend some time explaining how categories work (or give them the tagging article to read). Then you also may discuss the concept of hypertext.

Therefore they also should understand how to navigate as a reader.

• Understand the search field of Mediawiki (not so good) and understand that google search is a few days behind reality.
• Become familiar with categories. If you as a teacher feel that categories are missing, feel free to add new ones.
• Have them have a look at the the big picture (have to work on that page some day though ...)

If students wish to be "left alone" a bit while they are working on an article you may tell them to insert a template like this:

{{under construction}}. 

E.g. like in learning_by_teaching.

There is no prescription on article structure etc. I usually use a similar structure for most articles. But it's a habit, not a rule. They certainly also can reorganize, not just complete.

Students may express opinions (but make it clear). They also can 'sign articles or sections if they wish (that may help motivation) or can at least add a <pageby/> tag on top of a page like in Reflection. This may help their motivation.

Also, if they want to work on something and and an existing article seems to be really incompatible, they can just create a new one. But tell them to link the two. I am not fanatical about the idea that each concept should only be discussed in one place.

Finally, please do not worry about quality. Most existing articles are not good, nor academic .... would take me years to do something that is perfect. I rather just went for volume.

Organizing teacher's monitoring and scaffolding work

It's a good idea to come up with a plan to monitor what your students do, but with a minimal amount of work for you.

There are 2 ways and that can be combined:

(1) Require from each student that they list pages they worked on in their wiki home page. In addition you may ask them to write down exactly what they did change;

• Example: http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/User:Chris

(2) You can require students to add a tag to each modified page and to each one's home page, e.g. something like

[[Category: Course Staf-2x]]

• Make sure that you create the category beforehand, e.g. in your teacher's home page and then edit it (e.g. add a link to your official course page).

Benefits for you are:

• You quickly can find all students 'and what they worked on
• You have a Wiki teaching portfolio that you can show

Here is an example from the french version:

• Maltt Eia 2006-2007