User:Pluke/sandbox

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Cooper
Cooper N S. 2000. How natural is a nature reserve? An ideological study of British nature conservation landscapes. Biodiversity and Conservation 9, 1131-1152

    

wiki education article
Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.

We have all been in the teaching game for several months now and I'm sure we're using every opportunity we can to engage our children in every way possible. This may be interactive presentations, role plays, questions and answers, and the holy grail of them all, peer teaching. The idea of collaborative learning is a well-studied and effective one. With a little guidance, getting students to teach each other and lead learning can give excellent results and even decrease the workload of the teacher!

I first encountered Wikipedia in 2004 and was amazed at the ease by which I soon got involved, with splutterings of contributions to the site, and the amount of knowledge and discussion being so freely available. I'm sure many of you, just like me, use Wikipedia as your first port of call for easy facts. And I'm certain there are a lot of you out there who have received carefully researched, 'own words' homework, still littered with those blue Wikipedia hyperlinks on all the difficult words. Teacher: "Ali is this your own work?" Ali: "Yeah Sir." Teacher: "All your own work?" Ali: "Yeah Sir." Teacher: "How come it has all these words highlighted in blue?" Ali: "Don't know..." Teacher: "And what exactly does Onomatopoeia mean?" Ali: "He was clever... innit!"

So we can see a wiki can be a great way to research topics; but how can this be useful for us outside of simple research homework?

One of the things that kept me involved with Wikipedia was watching the so called Delphi effect in action. The idea that multiple semi-skilled people could come together and produce something in excess of what a fully-skilled person could produce got me disturbingly excited. I was actually part of a mass of people (who are by no means experts in their fields) coming together and through collaborative dialogue producing some outstanding and comprehensive works. I learnt about a whole bundle of things along the way. If there was some way that I could get my students engaged with this process then perhaps I could engage their learning on a new level.

Learning is a social process that occurs through interpersonal interaction within a cooperative context. Individuals, working together, construct shared understandings and knowledge.

So surely if you got a load of kids together, using this new fangled ICT gubbins then they could produce some great work, learn a lot along the way including some funky ICT skills. Looking into the educational journals you can see they are littered with examples of collaborative story writing, picture making, book building, presentation constructing etc. So if you can script it, it can work, but how can this help you tomorrow with no knowledge of how to get started?

Well there are currently several places you can start. You may want to encourage you class to make a school entry on Wikipedia. Wikipedia has many brothers and sisters, for a little 'research and write' task you could always introduce your class to making an article on the Simple Wikipedia, where the language needs to be simple and straight forward

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

For those of you who are finding that it's easier to write your own material than use the awful text books provided by your school, you might as well contribute your hard work to a wikibook textbook. Just like Wikipedia you can edit them collaboratively and it concentrates on producing school level texts; I'm trying to get some of my sixth formers to help me write my 'Computing A-Level' textbook. They are mostly available for A-Level students but it doesn't stop you starting your own for a different course, with the kids summarising the class notes and making their own revision text. Most of all, they are free!

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Help:About http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Category:GCSE http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Category:A-level http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A-level_Computing

If you are feeling particularly brave you can even have a go at setting up your own wiki, much like this one set up by our very own Mr. Bullock, or ask your IT department what they can provide you with. Mention the word Moodle and they may get very excited.

Keep your eyes peeled as the Teach First wiki will be going on-line soon, offering you a place to collaborate with your peers, share those lovely resources you have been slaving over and discuss those pressing questions or even last weeks football.

Now for a little plea from myself:

After writing the Teach First article on Wikipedia earlier this year when desperately seeking other things to do to avoid marking, I managed to get it featured on the front page of Wikipedia under the 'Did You Know' section. I have since added bits and bobs here and there, but it's in desperate need of someone who can string a sentence together better than I, and some serious expansion into the origins, territorial teachers etc. (check the discussion page)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_First

Your help would be greatly appreciated!

P.S. the word wiki comes from the Hawaiian, wiki wiki, for quicker - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

Shortened wiki Article
Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.

We have all been in the teaching game for several months now and I'm sure we're using every opportunity we can to engage our children in every way possible. This may be interactive presentations, role plays, questions and answers, and the holy grail of them all, peer teaching. The idea of collaborative learning is a well-studied and effective one. With a little guidance, getting students to teach each other and lead learning can give excellent results and even decrease the workload of the teacher!

Surely if you got a load of kids together, using this new fangled ICT gubbins then they could produce some great work, learn a lot along the way including some funky ICT skills. Looking into the educational journals you can see they are littered with examples of collaborative story writing, picture making, book building, presentation constructing etc, all using ICT and the minimum of effort. So if you can script it, it can work, but how can this help you tomorrow with no knowledge of how to get started?

Well there are currently several places you can start. You may want to encourage you class to make a school entry on Wikipedia. Wikipedia has many brothers and sisters, for a little 'research and write' task you could always introduce your class to making an article on the Simple Wikipedia, where the language needs to be simple and straight forward

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

For those of you who are finding that it's easier to write your own material than use the awful text books provided by your school, you might as well contribute your hard work to a wikibook textbook. Just like Wikipedia you can edit them collaboratively and it concentrates on producing school level texts; I'm trying to get some of my sixth formers to help me write my 'Computing A-Level' textbook. They are mostly available for A-Level students but it doesn't stop you starting your own for a different course, with the kids summarising the class notes and making their own revision text. Best of all, they are free!

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Help:About

If you are feeling particularly brave you can even have a go at setting up your own wiki, much like http://www.MrBullock.net set up by our very own Mr. Bullock, or ask your IT department what they can provide you with. Mention the word Moodle and they may get very excited.

Keep your eyes peeled as the Teach First wiki will be going on-line soon, offering you a place to collaborate with your peers, share those lovely resources you have been slaving over and discuss those pressing questions or even last weeks football.

Now for a little plea from myself:

After writing the Teach First article on Wikipedia earlier this year when desperately seeking other things to do to avoid marking, I managed to get it featured on the front page of Wikipedia under the 'Did You Know' section. I have since added bits and bobs here and there, but it's in desperate need of someone who can string a sentence together better than I, and some serious expansion into the origins, territorial teachers etc. (check the discussion page)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_First

Your help would be greatly appreciated!

Atlantic Wall Fortresses
ever heard of before/don't have access to/have access to, but software not good enough/have access to sufficiently good software.

Pierre Gassendi a mid point between descartes and hobbes