Saturday, February 19, 2011

Wikis as Portfolios


I have just started using a wiki with my Teens 1 course. Students are between 10 to 12 years old. I have used wikis with young learners before and everytime I do it, I am always surprised at their creativity and their enthusiasm in owing a virtual space. I generally create accounts for them in Pbworks. I enter their names and the site generates usernames and passwords. They really have fun with the passwords assigned to them (always a combination of the name of an animal and a number followed by a fruit,for example, snake4mango. Everytime I do this, I get the chance to teach them English and some basic digital skills. I also try to teach them something about design. Sometimes they use pictures that are too large and I give feedback saying that smaller pictures make scrolling a bit easier and content more visible. They are just beginning and they loved when I browse their recently created pages in the data show in our class. I am realy looking forward to what will come out of this round of digital experience.

Monday, February 07, 2011

My Photos - The Semester Begins (25)

Thinking about the new semester and my plans for the students I still do not know. We teachers always have the table set and lots of places in our minds and hearts, don't we?. This year, my heart and mind are set on working on more collaborative tasks. I will set work on social networking aside because the groups I will get have basic language level. Besides that, social networking websites always start as free and later start charging. This has proven to be a bit disappointing to me. So, I will do more work with blogs and wikis. I have blogs that are not updated and will revive them for my new groups. Wikis are also a good way to work with basic levels because they allow us to create pages for students and work like a portfolio to keep their work.
I will be sharing my work here using this quoting feature.

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