Toying with Wiki's (or knock offs)

This is my retreat into reflecting upon what it means to teach soul to soul among the perceptions of those in and out of the ELL classroom. How do I perceive myself as a digital learner, or whatever the term is today at this nano second screaming by.

Since teaching in urban, near-urban, suburban areas with elementary, middle, high school and now alternative students, I ask myself what do I know? Writing isn’t enough, it’s where it goes. I used to hear that publishing was going public with writing for my students, but now the Internet is changing that. One of my ELL students froze-eyes-glazed-over-fingers-curled at the keyboard when she tried her first blog posting. How do they go from reading a draft for an audience of six student to sending it out there to faceless critics?

How do I help my Ell’s, with laptops open, asking me, “But Miss, my hyperlinks not working today but did yesterday. Why?” Then I hear, ” Miss, Miss, come here, I don’t get this.” And the defiance to the general concept of research let alone a wiki, “Miss, I’m not citing sources on my wiki, why do it, can’t I just cut and paste it all? It is faster.” What part of my professional education prepared me for how to use these digital toys with the aim of supporting my students’ second language (L2) acquisition?
Is it naive, daring or wasteful to say to my students, “Hey, lets make a wiki of our research and it will change as your ideas and learning change. How does that sound?” My students follow my lead. They nor I were award that other students were already doing this around the country. One day I tripped upon The Fischbowl and found a 100 wikified research pages. That was humbling. I was back in my preschool pottery class where all clay turned to ashtrays at my touch and the princess next to me was crafting knockoff Ming vases.

So my students are creating their wiki’s in Blackboard which is the equivalent of a clay ashtray. This in no way denigrates the dedication my ELL students have to learning about these wiki’s. I am amazed they are sticking with it despite the limited flash factor of Blackboard compared with the wikis they viewed on wikispaces.

Next year, I will take the advice of a National Writing Project Teacher Consultant from North Carolina who was showing blogging as a genre at the Rural Sites conference, “When it comes to trying out new technology ask for forgiveness instead of permission.”