User:Nils peterson/Lesson Plan

Learning With Wikipedia - Nov 3 to Dec 15, 2010

A Community-Led Learning (CLL) session for children grades 4-6.

12:30 – 2:45 pm @ Palouse Prairie School

Motivation for this project

Here is a current news item from the Chronicle of Higher Ed describing research into student's research skills. Where does Wikipedia fit into this discussion? Its a way for a learner to get started. It gives some beginning information to jump start exploring deeper. It could be the motivation to improve an article and a place to practice sharing research skills.

Background on the design

This session follows some of our thinking at WSU about learning with wikis and inspired by the much more ambitious project at Univ of British Columbia, Murder Madness Mayhem

Marketing blurb

Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia anybody can edit. Our CREW is going to discover things we didn’t know about our local region. Then we will decide what information Wikipedia is missing and edit Wikipedia to improve it. Be bold.

Learning targets

I can find things that interest me in Wikipedia
I can decide how good a Wikipedia page is and what changes would improve it
I can edit Wikipedia to contribute new materials

Internet appropriate use policy

This activity will give us several different ways to talk about the ideas in the policy, on page 8 of the student handbook.

Nov 3 - Orientation

Children will do some orientation to behavior and other expectations with teachers
Introductions: facilitator, coordinator, participants
Reading (could this prompt an idea and then people introduce themselves relative to the idea, e.g., I'm Nils and I'm interested in...
Learning targets: Introduce and begin understand
Introduction to the activity - Find and explore one of our local towns, find and follow a link, look for interesting things
Q & A about the activity
Activity: Asking Questions, What things interest you about the people, places, or history of the Palouse?
Report out to spark reflection (if there is time)
Reflection:
- What questions to you have about Wikipedia?
- What person, place or thing from our area interests you?
Dinner table talk:
- What are some things my family finds interesting in the Palouse?
- What questions do they have about our area?
After Dinner work:
- Explore Wikipedia with your family.
- Search for some local things that are interesting.

What Happened Today/ What's Next There are five 4th grade children in the group. We did much of the outline above in our abbreviated session. The "I'm interested in" prompt was bent by the kids into a much more general thing. Replies were

downloads (2 kids)
jazz (1 kid)
animals (2 kids)
newspaper (1 kid) or more exactly, reading the crime reports in the local paper

The CLL organizers want an email letter to families before Monday, I'll post that here.

Possible pages/topics to explore next week:

Jazz The UI Jazz Festival has a page and its linked from the UI page. Its not linked from the Moscow page
the local paper Moscow-Pullman Daily News is a stub page and could easily be improved
Highway 8 is linked from Moscow, and has a short page. It is not mentioned in Troy, Idaho Both the highway and Troy could be improved.
Exploring animals in Idaho, and particularly in the region might be an activitey

Nov 10 - Exploring and Evaluating

Reading: Be Bold section from Be Bold
Vocabulary word: evaluate (what we are going to do to the pages we read)
Review learning targets
Sharing:
- What questions do we have?
- What person, place or thing from our area do you want to explore?
Getting in groups (pairs) around our questions, choosing our page (two related pages max) Not sure this will work, at least one kid is out sick today.
Activity: Exploring our interest (Asking Questions, Looking for answers)
Sharing:
- What pages did we find in Wikipedia?
- What helps us search?
Activity: Following links, Looking at more pages (BE THINKING WHAT MAKES A PAGE GOOD)
Wikipedia Links vs External Links
- Start from a city page (Moscow, Troy, Potlatch, Genessee)
- Pop out following an Wikipedia link to another page, look briefly, jump page
Report out:
- What was a good page you found?
- What did you find missing?
Reflection: How do you know when something you read is valuable?
Dinner table talk:
- How does your family decide when something they read is valuable?
- How do they decide if something is missing when they are reading?
After Dinner work:
- Look at pages you chose today
- Talk about what makes them valuable and what could be improved

What happened today/ What's next The children were not very focused. Reading the Moscow, Idaho page was not something that captured them. They continue to want to search for ice cream or Hershey's chocolate, and don't have the skill to focus their search on those topics to be within our geographical parameters (Whitman and Latah counties) (ie Cowgirl Chocolates in Moscow).

We did make progress, however. We developed a couple criteria for evaluating wiki page content. See beginning of our rubric below. A whiteboard of our discussions is [here].

Given the student wiggly dispositions we moved through the outline above more quickly than anticipated. 15 minutes were spent in the playground before coming in to write the reflection. We had 25 minutes for writing reflections and some hasty student efforts. Consequently 3 students moved on to writing out a sentence or two about what they want to change in Wikipedia. This will serve as input for our efforts at writing on the Talk page next week.

Pages that seem to be in play are:

Moscow, Idaho where we discovered that community arts and events are missing
St. Maries, Idaho where the goal is to add a schools reference (perhaps inspired by the Moscow page)
Moscow-Pullman Daily News (a stub page) and
Emida, Idaho (a blank page that we will stub out)
Rails to Trails I'm using this as a demonstration page. It is a list pointing to the Bill Chipman Palouse Trail connecting Pullman and Moscow. The list is missing a reference to the Latah Trail, from Moscow to Troy and points east.

Our evaluation (a vocabulary word for the reflection sheet) of pages yielded these criteria so far:

Ideas were missing Page was missing	found answer to my question
blurry image	message or idea in picture relates to the words

Nov 17 - Discussing What to Change

Reading "...but please be careful" section of the Be Bold page (above)
Vocabulary word: revert (its in the reading.)
Review learning targets and our evaluation criteria (see above)
Recall: What changes we want to make. (some wrote these out last week, Nils has them in the folder)
Demo: Look at a "talk page".
Activity: Look at the talk page for your city/topic
- What is a talk page, what happens there?
Discuss: What do we want to say on our talk page?
- What is missing that we want to improve?
- What are our criteria for valuing the change? (we didn't do a good job of this)
- Lets make our evaluation criteria better? (we didn't do a good job of this)
Demo:

Editing the Talk Page (adding words)
Signing your comment (we will just sign with a dash our first name, and grade, e.g., -Nils)

Demo Editing to:
- Make Links
- Add Pictures (we didn't do this)
- Creating New pages (we didn't do this)
Activity: Add our thoughts to a talk page
Sharing: What is being talked about? What ideas do we (or others) have for making our page better?
Prepare for next time - Reflection:
- What will you need to research for what you want to add?
- What help to you need from family or friends?
Dinner table talk:
- Share your page and our evaluation criteria.
- What ideas does your family have to make your page better?
- What might make our evaluation criteria better?
After Dinner work:
- Show your family the talk page
- Is there more you want to say on the talk page about what to change?
- Add your ideas to the talk page

What happened today/ What's next One child was absent and one was not very focused today, but the others were pretty well engaged at taking their evaluation of the page and writing notes about what they needed to know/ do next.

During the session we were visited by a reporter and photographer from the Daily News and a story appeared in the Nov 18, 2010 edition.

Children have identified things they need next and I am writing families to remind them of a need to help gather materials between now and Dec 1.

What happened after Nov 17

I placed a message below student comments on each of our pages, describing what is happening and pointing here.
A welcome message was posted on Nils_Peterson user page, this led to several resources, including advice from user Jbmurray of the Muder Madness Mayhem project.
The talk page for Emida, Idaho was deleted because the page itself did not exist
An article on our activity appeared in the Nov 18 edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News
I added the template {{Educational assignment|date=2010-12-15}} to each of the remaining pages. Need to figure out the syntax for adding a link in the template.
Nothing else has happened to the pages or the talk pages (as of Tu Nov 30)
I created the Bill_Chipman_Palouse_Trail page as a stub. It would be great to add a picture of the trail gateway.

Nov 24 - Research Trip to Location (No School)

There is no school and no CLL this week.

This holiday week may be an excellent time to go with your parents (or a CREW member's parents) on research trip. Your trip can be online or in a car. Your goal is to visit somewhere/something related to your page or the changes you want to make.

What research can you bring back: a picture? A quote? An idea? A new question?

Prepare for next week:

Have your ideas ready (maybe also add notes to the talk page)
Email any pictures you want to add to Nils (Remember, you must have the copyright and be willing to share your rights).

Dec 1 - Changing Wikipedia Pages

Reading: : Reminder: we read "but please be careful" on the Be Bold page. Today's reading connects to PPSEL's idea of C.R.E.W. --Please do not bite the newcomers
Review learning targets and what we have done. How are you doing on our targets? Show of thumbs up.
Activity: Check your talk pages, did anyone reply?
Sharing: What’s going on with your talk page? What do you have to add to your page?
Activity: Peer reviewing our plans
Demo: Changing a page
Activity: Changing your page, making a contribution
Activity: View the History of our page; print it out
Reflection:
- What are you learning about Wikipedia?
- What are you learning about your topic?
Dinner table talk: Share and talk about what you changed in Wikipedia
After dinner work: Review your change with your family, make more changes

What happened after Dec 1

Our group worked on three pages:

Moscow, Idaho added a new Community Arts and Events section
St. Maries, Idaho where we added a section on Education and another "About the Town." Later Nils corrected spelling and link to school and school district number. The "About the Town" section was deleted with the note "(removed subjective and poorly written "about the town" section)" You can see the changes we made here. Perhaps we can talk about how to resurrect this section.
Emida, Idaho where we created a new page.

What we hope to accomplish next is adding some pictures to these pages.

Dec 8 - What happened? Preparing our presentation

Reading Assume Good Faith another part of the Wikipedia editor's advice.
Review learning targets:

I can find things on Wikipedia
I can evaluate the pages that I find
I can make changes and contribute to Wikipedia

Activity: Check our page. Check the talk page, what happened?
Sharing: What happened on our pages?
Add a picture to our page
Brainstorm: Plan our presentation, what should we share?
- What are big ideas we want to share?
- What would be good things to share?
- How can we share?
Reflection: How did you do on the learning targets?
- Find things
- Evaluate things
- Make contributions
Dinner table talk:
- Share what happened to our pages in Wikipedia.
- Tell about our presentation plans
- What ideas does your family have for your next steps?

Letters Home

Nov 7, after Nov 3 session

Dear Parents:

My name is Nils Peterson (my daughter is Karina Kramer, 4th grade) and I am coordinating this module with Alex Peterson (UI freshman). We are very excited to be involved with this session.

We are exploring our community from the PPSEL computer lab by looking in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

The first two weeks we will be going around looking for pages that interest us about our local community: places, people, history. Before Thanksgiving we hope to have identified a page, and a way we can contribute. We’ll be writing on the Wikipedia “Talk” page (You will see a discussion tab at the top of every page. Editors talk about how pages could be improved.)

After Thanksgiving we hope to have feedback from the world about our proposed changes and then we’ll start editing the articles. (To increase the chance of world feedback, I’ve been contacting WSU librarians who already work in Wikipedia to visit us virtually.)

I would like to invite your participation. I’m building a more detailed lesson plan on my user page in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nils_peterson/Lesson_Plan). I’d invite you to talk with your child about our activity (I called this Dinner Table Talk, but you can do it anytime.) For our orientation session – thinking about what interests us – I imagined you might have a conversation around questions like these:

What are some things my family finds interesting in the Palouse?
What questions do they have about our area?

On Wednesday one student was interested in jazz. Another in the Daily News. Others were still unsure, but found reading the Moscow, Idaho page in Wikipedia an interesting start.

In my lesson plan I’m also writing some notes about things you might do online to co-explore Wikipedia with your child. These are not required, but might give your child a chance to show you what we are learning and give you other ways to get involved. This week you might explore Wikipedia with your child and search for some local things that are interesting.

School is out the week of Thanksgiving, I’m hoping that in the 14 days between our meetings (Nov 17 to December 1) you can help us do some field research. This might involve visiting somewhere local connected to the page your child is working on. It might involve taking a digital picture that we can post in Wikipedia. (You must agree to make the copyright public domain.) I’ll send home more information as we get closer.

Let me know if you have ideas or questions about these activities.

Thanks!

Nils Peterson

Nov 12, after Nov 10 session

Families and Friends of Wikipedia Editors

Thanks to Steve Flint for pinch-hitting for Alex who was out this week.

Here is a summary of what happened in Community Led Learning Wed Nov 9 and what's next. You can read more on my wiki page for this CLL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nils_peterson/Lesson_Plan#Nov_10_-_Exploring_and_Evaluating

The children were not very focused Wednesday. Reading the Moscow, Idaho page was not something that captured them. They continue to want to search for ice cream or Hershey's chocolate, and don't have the skill to focus their search on those topics to be within our geographical parameters (Whitman and Latah counties) (ie Cowgirl Chocolates in Moscow).

We did make progress, however. We developed a couple criteria for evaluating wiki page content. See beginning of our criteria below. A whiteboard of our discussions is here. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nils_peterson/5169955244/sizes/l/

Given the students’ wiggly dispositions we moved through my lesson outline more quickly than anticipated. 15 minutes were spent in the playground before coming in to write the reflection. We had 25 minutes for writing reflections and some hasty student efforts. Consequently 3 students moved on to writing out a sentence or two about what they want to change in Wikipedia. This will serve as input for our efforts at writing on the Talk page next week.

Pages that seem to be in play are: Moscow, Idaho where we discovered that community arts and events are missing, St. Maries, Idaho where the goal is to add a schools reference (perhaps inspired by the Moscow page), the Moscow-Pullman Daily News (a stub) and Emida, Idaho (a blank page that we will stub out).

Our evaluation (a vocabulary word for our reflection sheet) of pages yielded these criteria so far: (see criteria above didn't render well after copy/paste)

The things you could help us work on before Nov 17:

I’m hoping you can talk at the dinner table (or elsewhere) about the ideas we are working with

   * How do you know when something you read is valuable?
   * What might make our evaluation criteria better?

And if you can go online with your student, s/he knows how to get to Wikipedia and can find one of the pages we are reading

Look at the page together. What ideas does your family have to make your page better?

As always your input is welcome 882-4620 or by email.

Nils

PS. This recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed on student research skills is the kind of thinking that lies behind my motivation for this CLL project

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/students-lack-basic-research-skills-study-finds/28112

After Dec. 1

The notes above were sent home as an email.