LTDC Online News

Presented by Dr. Debbie Paprocki

Assistant Professor of Spanish, UW Waukesha

She uses wikis for teaching Spanish. To view a sample of her activities:

http://spanishwauk.wikispaces.com

Wikis are useful especially when student numbers are large, to provide additional practice in communicating in Spanish.

Using Wikispaces:

The wiki administrator can set the look and feel etc. through Manage Wiki. Members are invited via e-mail. Anyone who is a member of the wiki can edit and change any of the pages in the wiki. Others can see pages nut not edit.

Use the History tab  to see who has entered changes. May provide information for participation element of grade.

Sample Assignments:

• Students create a script for small group skits that they then present for the class.
• Students insert questions about culture to “quiz” other students. Other students post answers.
• Students write poems, a 5-line Cinquian. Students in class go outside and write. Then students write final draft as homework  on wiki, resulting in an anthology.
• Insert image of an artwork. Students discuss the artwork on wiki. Students later add their own selections of artwork onto the wiki.
• Collaborative story: Instructor inserts a starting line of a story, e.g. It was a beautiful day when Ramon and Regina left the house for the park. Each students adds another line to the story.
• Instructor inserts the opening paragraph of a story–usually a suspenseful one. Each student writes a middle and ending to the story.

Tips:

• Remind students to click Save when done typing.

Discussion from participants: Sample assignments: etc.

• Have students collaborate to create a group glossary for review before an exam. Have students in  a language course put up sentences and then they edit each other’s for grammatical correctness and word choice.
• Assign small groups a different topic and wiki page. Each student adds information.
• Model editing behavior in the wiki.
• Have students write autobiographies. Then other students change the autobiographies ==change the facts in order to experience the editing of your own work — e.g. a student changes someone’s pet from a cat to a dog. Then debrief–what’s that like as an author?
• Idea is that as others edit a work, it becomes better and better.
• Community really builds.
• Assign students to contribute something to Wikipedia and experience the editing of others.
• Give students information about a sample case such as Adam Curry who wrote on a Wikipedia that he was instrumental in inventing podcasting, and got edited out by the community of editors. Other cases are out there also.
• Instructor sees a draft of a paper–can comment in place on student draft papers to help students write papers. Can
• Use in calculus class to solve problems as groups.
• Give students in small groups 100 points to allocate among their group members for their participation.
• Create a Sandbox page for everyone to submit to. This is a practice page to start posting anything.
• Page where they recommend topics before students divide into groups for projects.
• Have a page for technical questions and answers that students post and answer for each other.

Tools to try:  GoogleDocs, wikispaces, pbworks

About past project on wikis at UW System, see:

http://wiscwikis.wikispaces.com

Submitted by Lisa Larson