Hopefully this will be my final reflection on our wonderful Elementary Education Group 3 Wiki. I honestly just don't care about the Wiki anymore. I know I should not feel this way but I can't help it. I believe I've done all I can with the formatting, the linking from page to page, and posting all that is required by the rubric so I think I should be graded accordingly. However, if I were to leave the Wiki alone and not attend to it, I believe I will be penalized for others' laziness and lack of paying attention to the rest of the site format. And it should be noted that this belief comes from looking at input/additions from both sections. I'm not trying to point fingers at Jeff's group. Because of this, the whole site is frustrating and it is no longer fun and I don't care to engage it. I feel like by going back and fixing others' mistakes after everything has been formatted and made clear makes me seem like the kid that does all of the work in the group on the project but everyone gets an A anyways. I especially feel this way even after I had commented on pages saying, "Hey we need to put this in alphabetical order." It becomes less of a collaborative wiki and more of a burden for one person/a small portion of the group. But once again, this all goes back to communicating and the lack of it from the beginning on our group wiki. We are all guilty of that. This is also why I suggested that there be a class wiki and not a small group like we have. But for that you must read my other blog!
On a positive note, what I do like about the online side of this is that a professor or teacher can look at the history and see who did what and if something did become a one or two person show. I hope that comes into play if the site is not unified. The only catch about that is that a lot of work was done under my name while we were in the lab but that was all stuff we did together so it was all three of us. There is no way to mark that and make that known separately.
The last demanded topic for the blog: Slide show
I am actually a little upset I had to leave early due to a family emergency because I was really excited for my topic. I came up with the bright idea of having my theme be Imagination. I felt there was no better theme for me to choose because I didn't want limits on what I could do and what pictures to include. So with an imagination, there are no boundaries to keep you from exploring anything and everything. I had also already picked out a few photos, took a few photos, and had planned what to use for it so that I may finish it tonight. So, I look forward to creating it this weekend and posting it into my next blog and explaining what each picture was and how I elected to use it.
Here's my blog just as The Doctor ordered!
Imagination is a great theme for an album! Especially as an elementary ed teacher. Sometimes I am disappointed in my middle schoolers when they don't want to use their imagination. They're only 12! Do we really start getting the imagination beat out of us that early? It makes me sad.
ReplyDeleteSo I am the doc of whom you speak?! You keep trying to give me doctorate credentials when I don't have them! I have often told former students who come back to see me that they always had grounds for an "educational malpractice" suit based on my many mistakes in the classroom as a rookie (and even veteran) teacher! (For the record, Patrick, I am a doctoral student.)
ReplyDeleteNow, let's get down to business: initially upon reading your post, I feared you were missing the point of the wiki project. Managing group work is always a challenge for the teacher, no matter if the groups are f2f or virtual, as with the wiki. I know many a teacher (secondary level) who simply gave up doing "group work" for all the reasons you mention above. And my students typically groaned at the beginning of the semester when I told them we would be working in groups -- a lot. They, too, had experienced the inequity, the dysfunction, and the anxiety frequently attributed to working in groups. I had to scaffold, model, and facilitate groups, with specific and explicit instruction on conflict management, communication, even how physically to position desks together for maximum group cohesion. It took up to a month to instill these routines and procedures. Then, the groups took off and generally flourished!
Regarding the wiki, the same scaffolding and modeling must take place for the learners, whether they are youth or adult. This is where I think the TPTE 486 curriculum perhaps needs strengthening and refinement before the wiki project proceeds in Fall 2010. In fact, the 486 instructors are already discussing and sharing ideas for how we will do this differently -- see, the reflective practice never ends!
Your post actually gives me great hope because you do see the value of technology (in this case, the wiki tool) in how it assists learners and teacher by adding a level of transparency, accountability, and accessibility (anytime, anywhere, 24/7 learning). You are right about page histories, and the comments section will also prove invaluable for purposes of assessment. And, believe it or not -- the f2f interactions and bonafide conversations that have transpired as a result of this project will also feed into the overall assessment process.
In other words, the rubric is just a tool that outlines minimal expectations for the learner and provides the instructor with a certain amount of objective criteria by which to evaluate what is truly a subjective and complex process. I will be taking everything into consideration when I sit down next week to "grade" the wikis.
Thanks so much for your honest reflection. Think about how much this experience will inform your classroom approach when you ask young people to work together! Just don't become one of those embittered instructors who opts out of collaborative group work because "these kids" just don't get it. That's a bunch of hooey, and you are better than that!