It is as easy as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich....
pbwiki.com is a place where you can create your own wiki for classroom use. For educators, there is a choice that allows for classroom use, removing banners and advertisements from the sidebar of your screen. There are many options for using pbwiki in the classroom. PB wiki can be used as a storage place for students to store their best work as an electronic portfolio, and family, friends, and peers can leave comments on their work.
pbwiki.com is a place where you can create your own wiki for classroom use. For educators, there is a choice that allows for classroom use, removing banners and advertisements from the sidebar of your screen. There are many options for using pbwiki in the classroom. PB wiki can be used as a storage place for students to store their best work as an electronic portfolio, and family, friends, and peers can leave comments on their work.
I have used pbwiki in my classroom in the past and was very pleased to see it made the list of web 2.0 tools I discovered. Let me share with you how I used it:
Similar to The FLat Stanley Project that many elementary educators are familiar with, students created a gingerbread man and mailed it to another state to a family or friend. Students would write a friendly letter asking the receiver to take care of their gingerbread man, document the visit in words or with pictures, and report back to the creator (the student). Instead of just receiving mail via the United States Postal Service, we gave hosts the option to communicate what the gingerbread friends did on our wiki. I created a page for each student's gingerbread man that the student could upload images and sentences to, telling about their gingerbread friend. Those hosting a gingerbread man could post comments on what city and state the gingerbread man was in, what they did, and where they are sending them off to next. It was a great project. We also had a page for each student to post and share their individual work. The students loved this because Gramma, Grandpa, and moms and dads and split families could go online to see their student's work. They could post comments of praise and encouragement. Students would rush home to read their comments, and post comments on their friends' pages. It have them a real reason to use phonetic spelling in their young emergent reader lives to communicate with their peers and family members. From this project and the integration of technology into Social Studies with kindergarten and first grade students, I was awarded Outstanding Teacher of The Year from the FLorida Council for Social Studies. It was a great experience. The project was a success, and I would have repeated it if our school decided to not allow us to use outside servers and providers for school related projects. Now we must use iWeb, and they are beginning to branch into Moodle - a personal learning community that is growing within our district.
1 comments:
- beckyward said...
What a great idea! I know my mother would love to be able to get online and look at my children's school work and offer them praise and encouragement. How unfortunate to lose the ability to continue the use due to the politics of education. That is definitely going to have to change or we as educators won't be able to make a positive change in our students lives. I understand the need for protection, but it is becoming prohibiting.
Thank you for sharing this experience. I had never even heard of a wiki prior to this program and I am excited about using them in my classroom.- December 13, 2009 10:13 AM
Congratulations on your award, Melissa. Cute idea to use the gingerbread man to incorporate writing across the curriculum. I am wondering if there was an issue that caused your district or school to restrict pbwiki. Our district does the same. Nonetheless, I am proud of your accomplishment and the positive experience you had with your students. ~JML
ReplyDeleteWow. Melissa, What an amazing award that was presented to you. I am impressed.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post. I too am a kindergarten teacher who loves the book Flat Stanley. I have always mailed out Flat Stanley to different people, but how much easier it would be to use a PB wiki. I have never heard about that until attending Full Sail. The students would get quicker responses using the internet. What a powerful tool for the students to be able to share information with family not only at home but miles away! I am sure students were intrinsically motivated by this project.
One thing I did with my students, which they loved, was mark on a big world map where Flat Stanely had been. I had flight attendant friends who would take Flat Stanely all over the world.
It is a shame your district doesn't allow you to use anymore outside servers. I look forward to trying this project in my own classroom someday!