Student Wiki Update

Scavenger Hunter Pros!
Went over the answers to the students' scavenger hunt this week. They did amazing!!! It provided great talking points for me to go over some of the things that I otherwise could/would have in a boring lecture (blah!).

Wiki is Ready to Roll...
So using one of the suggestions I got from a comment (shout-out to Mr. Frank White!), I decided to go with pbwiki. Wow--super easy! I set my fifth grade global awareness wiki up in a snap and even used the students first names to get them all an account that...drum roll please...does not require an email login! The most difficult part was meticulously thinking about how I wanted this to be organized. I realized that I wanted the students working in pairs for this project and that no two student pairs could be in one page at a time to edit, so I would need to have a separate page for each group each week. I developed a total of something like 16 pages (i.e., Ancient Rome Geography, Ancient Rome Leaders, Ancient Rome Government, Ancient Rome Art and Architecture) rather than putting all of these topics in a single page. There are separate folders for each ancient culture to keep it organized that way, though. Then, I had to come up with the headings/subheadings which took quite some time. It's done, though, and that's the best part!

Students are Ready, too!
I gave the students the opportunity to pick the partner they wanted to work with. I didn't think it'd be fair to put them with someone they may not want to work with. For this to be the success I want it to be, I want them to choose someone who (as I told them) will share the workload and be a easy to work with. Then, it's on them if they don't mesh well--please don't blame, me, kiddos!

I showed them the site, too, to sort of plant the seed for next week. They were pumped up last week when learning that they'd be the authors of a wiki site, yet I didn't tell them the topic of it. So, I was a little worried that when they heard it was information about ancient civilizations for social studies that they'd be less interested. Nope--they appear to be excited and ready to go! I'll keep you posted on their enthusiasm. Wish us luck in this upcoming first week of adding content!