8th graders and a wiki

We're reading John Steinbeck's The Pearl 8th grade enriched language arts, and today my students wrote their first posts to "The Pearl WikiParty." If anyone reading this would like an invitation to the wiki, let me know and I'll send you an invitation! In the past, I've assigned reading logs as a way for students to think about their reading in an open-ended way without prescribed questions from me. The readings logs written to me evolved into "Pearl penpals": students wrote their logs under pseudonyms to other students in other classes. I liked having an authentic audience for student writing; the quality of their thinking and writing increased when they were writing and responding to their peers. So "The Pearl WikiParty" is another incarnation of the penpal idea.

We spent part of class on Monday getting into the wiki and setting up pseudonyms. It was a frustrating 20-30 minute ordeal -- way longer than I planned to spend. Our internet connection seemed to be extremely slow in one block, and many of the kids had trouble getting into their (non school-issued) email accounts in order to accept my invitation to the wiki. Some of the troubles continued today when students were writing their first wiki entry. Some students accidentally wrote under their real names, and some students accidentally erased other students' entries.

But now that we're in and running, I'm liking it. The first entries were posted today, and I read many of them, and it seems that most students are taking the assignment seriously. (I did mention to students that I would be sending invitations to join the wiki to our principal and assistant principal, too!) The mystery of using pseudonyms adds to the fun. I'm withholding judgment for a while -- as I've learned it's necessary to do when doing anything with technology for the first time.