I decided against assigning my Algebra 2 kids their wiki. That class is so divided ability-wise that is would have been an interesting result; I guess I just didn't want to deal with the whining that would have resulted from the assignment. Maybe I'll do it second semester. I think the learning of the tools is an important lesson, as is the actual review involved in getting their pages put together. Hmm.

The precalc kids' pages turned out pretty good. We had some issues with getting it all together, thanks mainly in part to some students (apparently in one of my other classes, not precalc) that decided to hijack it a couple of different times. They were somehow able to log in as kids in my precalc class and then editted their little hearts out. Thank goodness for the ability to revert to previous versions! Needless to say, my precalc kids were not happy about it (and neither was I!). From what I understand, one student was punished for it. It took place at his house, but he claims innocence. He was in alternative school (our version of in-school suspension) for the past 5 days and should be back in class on Tuesday. I'm interested to see if he says anything to me about it or not.

I gave the kids a follow-up to their wiki assignment where they had to go back to the wiki, look through 5 of their classmates' pages, and evaluate them. I wanted them to know what all was on it and what could have been done. Everyone seemed pretty pleased and it was funny to see how harsh they can be on grading. They also had to answer questions for me about what they learned and if they enjoyed the project and if I should assign it again. Aside from remarks about the hackers, most kids seemed pretty pleased with the project, learned some new uses of technology, and would like to do something like that again. Yay! Mission accompished.

fouss08.pbwiki.com

Check it out!