Our Planets Wiki at Coylton Primary
Context
Our Planets Wiki – click to enlarge
Judith Lennox was P7 teacher at Coylton Primary School in South Ayrshire and is now DHT in the school. When it came to their topic work on Earth and Space, the P7 pupils at Coylton Primary School had lots of ideas about what they would like to learn about. Judith incorporated all of these ideas into the Glow Group she put together for the topic.
Judith’s Tour of the Earth and Space Glow Group Part 1 (3:40)
Judith’s Tour of the Earth and Space Glow Group Part 2 (2:45)
pupil news and web links – click to enlarge
The pupils were involved in the discussion about what they would study and what the Glow Group would focus on but this was put together by Judith herself. She was able to give over control to them in a few important areas: the first was a Pupil News web part where pupils could add their own news items that they had come across to share with the rest of the class; the second was a web links web part where each pupil could add links to websites they thought would be interesting to other pupils on the Earth and Space Topic. The third important area where pupils were given more control and responsibility in the Glow Group was the Our Planets Wiki. The class worked in groups to research different planets and then to populate a wiki page on each of the planets. At the time of this project Judith used wikispaces.com, however, she would now be able to use the wiki tool within Glow.
This third Cookbook on Judith’s Earth and Space Glow Group will focus on the use she made of a wiki tool. In the Recipe section, the how-to videos will show how to recreate this using Glow Wikis. Four further Cookbooks will look at reusing a Glow Group through a template; the use made of embedded YouTube and TeacherTube videos within the Glow Group; the use made of picture libraries within the Glow Group and lastly on the use of a survey for topic evaluation.
You will find links to the other Cookbooks on Coylton Primary’s Earth and Space Topic Glow Group below as and when they are written:
- Working with a Glow Group template for an Earth and Space Topic
- Engaging videos in an Earth and Space Glow Group at Coylton Primary
- Showcasing Pupil Work in Picture Libraries
- Using a survey for topic evaluation to enable pupil voice
Our Planets Wiki – click to enlarge
A wiki, originally from the Hawaiian for fast, can live up to its name in terms of creating space on the web. Groups of pupils can very quickly get started with creating their own web spaces without worrying about website design. They are perfect as a collaborative tool with lots of people able to edit the one area. Wikis are an incredibly flexible tool within the classroom. A wiki allows teachers to hand over responsibility to pupils to investigate a particular area. Pupils are often enthusiastic about adding their own stamp to the Glow Group in an area that they can control. They know their research in the individual groups is leading towards them controlling what goes into a particular area that is owned by them. It allowed Judith to have control of the Glow Group and exactly what she wanted in there and yet also to give over responsibility to the pupils for a particular area without changing permissions for the whole Glow Group. The pupils worked in small groups with a separate log on to wiki spaces for each group. Judith was able to see which group had edited which part and then protect the final product at the end.
Ingredients
What did Judith need to be able to allow her P7 pupils to have more authorship responsibility within the Earth and Space Glow Group?
- A class Glow Group for the Earth and Space Topic created as a sub-group of the class Glow Group
- Pupils set with Contributor permissions for the Glow Group
- a Pupil News web part
- a Pupil web links web part
- Judith took out a wikispaces.com free account and gave the pupils log-ins for this
- She also added a link to this wiki to the Noticeboard page of the Glow Group – however, to do this with a Glow Wiki she would need to have done the following:
- add a Glow Wiki web part to the Noticeboard page
- Create an Our Planets wiki – the pupils would then be able to get started straight away
Recipe
The videos below will allow you to recreate what Judith did with wikis using a Glow Wiki.
Creating the Our Planets Wiki (3:36)
Editing the front page of the Our Planets Wiki (3:59)
Creating the pages in the Our Planets Wiki (2:50)
Changing the Privacy Settings on the Our Planets Wiki (1:48)
Impact
Judith Lennox
Judith explains how the pupils were “hooked-in” to Glow (0:29)
Brandon on why he likes Glow (0:29)
Brandon and Dana
Dana on why she likes Glow (0:23)
