"Light -Bulb!" The How-To Blog

"Light...bulb!" says Gru from Despicable Me when he has a diabolical idea. I had a "light - bulb" moment when I was fixing another toilet earlier this week (Three kids makes this a habitual exercise). I'm a frequent flyer at Doityourself.com, mainly because it saves me hundreds in repair or renovation bills each year, partly because I like to play with tools, but mostly because I get out of real work (like cleaning the bathroom) when I have to fix something (like the toilet). Anyway, I realized that my favorite site is actually...wait for it...yes, a blog! I hit some of my other oft-visited DIY sites, and sure enough, they're all blogs! Here's a list of the top 50 by visitation data: http://www.invesp.com/blog-rank/Do_It_Yourself.

There are all sorts of these Do-it-yourself blogs out there. Here's one about DIY weddings. Here's another just for computer geek stuff. Chances are, if you want to do it yourself, there is a blog out there for you.

Mind you, these blogs are often very, very fancy. Nevertheless, they are still blogs. The consist of numerous archived and organized "posts" with places for readers to comment and discuss, and even RSS feeds. Reader comments are often quite helpful as well, adding extra advice the experts might have omitted ("Be careful not to over-tighten. I cracked the plastic bolt and had to order a new set...")

Quite often these blog posts contain a lot of multimedia. I once Googled the "thumping" sound made by my washing machine and was directed to a blog that told me I needed to replace the drive block underneath the tub. It listed step by step directions, with pictures. There was even an embedded YouTube video guiding me through the process that had a link pop up which took me to a site where I could order the part. I was in handyman heaven.

So I can be a bit slow to make connections at times, but finally, "light-bulb!" I figured, why not take the "How-To" writing project I do every year in 7th grade and make it a blogging project? Every year I start the project with the old, "Tell me how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich," exercise and we have a good laugh while I try to stick the knife through the jar, spread peanut butter on the closed bag of bread, etc., until they get the point about writing clear, organized, thorough directions. Then I let them choose how-to topics, we do a little research, work our way through the writing process, and hopefully turn their compositions into presentations if we have time in our curriculum schedule (I once had a kid demonstrating wicked skateboard tricks in the front of my classroom, and I've tasted plenty of yummy homemade cakes).

So with a digital camera or a little video editing, they could create some really great How-to blogs. My former student's skateboard demonstration would have been a lot safer that way. What's great is that there are plenty of examples available to show them. Maybe I'll make a video blog example next time I have to fix a toilet...or maybe not (the language may border on PG-13).

So, anybody know of a teacher who has tried this before? I'm pretty jazzed about the idea.

Wikis with Training Wheels

I know the default topic is to blog about blogging and discuss the use of blogs in the classroom. I'm sure I'll get to plenty of that, but in the meantime since we are looking at wikis this week, I thought I'd start a discussion about that topic.

I tried a few wiki experiments in my classes this past year on Wikispaces. The first few were a disastrous mess. I thought I had the activity well-planned, the directions were clear, and I demonstrated with examples on the projector. Still, most of my middle school students didn't know where to start, how to collaborate to organize information, and simply gave up. The ones who did contribute ended up adding minimal information in a discordant jumble of non sequiturs and disjointed responses.

So I finally realized that at this level, they need to start with some training wheels. I decided to make a "fill-in-the-blank" wiki. I know this is counter intuitive when we think of the constructivist principles behind collaborative web space, but you have to start somewhere to learn the basic wiki interface. And let's face it, most kids are used to the question and answer model. Weaning them off of it and easing them into producing their own learning content takes time.

Nevertheless, I still wanted them to be responsible for the majority of the web content. So I settled on a table format, which Wikispaces fortunately supports. My 7th grade class was reading The Pearl by John Steinbeck, and I wanted them to create a list of allegories and metaphors found in the novel along with analysis and discussion of each. So the table I created consisted of the following columns:

• Student name
• allegorical element (character or object that symbolizes something else).
  
• what this symbolizes
• life lesson learned
• Peer comments

Each student was responsible for filling in his or her row on a first-come, first-served basis (no duplicate topics). The final column was reserved for students to comment on each others' contributions and add their own thoughts (required). Overall, it worked pretty well. Many of the students got excited about it. It was not uncommon during our classroom discussions about the novel to hear a voice whisper, "I'm putting that in the wiki!" Then another would answer, "Not if I get there first!"

I kept the wiki private, so I can't provide a link to the actual page. However, Wikispaces lets you export the pages to html, so I did that toward the end of the project. I was then able to past this onto a new page in this blog here. You can also hit it from a tab at the top. Of course, the formatting is not quite the same, and it's a bit horizontally squished with no table guidelines, but you'll get the general idea.

Next time I'll work a bit more on the quality of written responses, as some did not follow my usual standards of paragraph development. A lot of the kids slipped into "Facebook status" or "Tweet" mode, as if they had to keep within a character limit. Now that this bunch has had some practice, I'm eager to see if I can get a less structured wiki off the ground next year. One tool that I would like to use more is the discussion area. I realize that I could have helped generate even more enthusiasm if I posted encouragement in there to let them know I was really watching. I did make comments about the wiki in class, but I think it would have been different to see me chiming in here and there and hopefully generating some side discussions.

The History section was a lifesaver. I had more than one student mess things up, delete their own contributions, etc. The history tool is really neat because you can select multiple revisions and Wikispaces will highlight what has been deleted or added. This makes things very easy to fix once you get used to what you are seeing. I want to try out WetPaint wikis as well, especially after seeing the name again in the Richardson text. I've heard it's history utility is even better.

So, any other thoughts on wikis in the classroom? I know a high school teacher who sets them up as study groups for his finals. I've read a lot of ideas, but what really interests me is the what's and how's in middle school. A lot of great ideas work in college level test studies, but I teach a different species.

Connecting the blogs through RSS

Well, I think I'm up and running here.

This isn't my first time working with blogger, but this whole idea of a little blog network connected by RSS feeds is a new one for me. Of course, like a doofus I spent about an hour figuring out how to do it rather that reading the directions linked in the blog assignment instructions. That's typical me.

Instead, I saw how Chrissie's blog was set up, and figured that she got it right (that's a compliment based on past performances). So I played around with the settings until my sidebar looked the same as hers. Then I remembered there were directions to go back and read. I didn't do things exactly the same way as illustrated, but I think it's set up right.

I never really messed around with all the "add gadget" options before. Looks like fun.