More planning for the China project--6th grade

Its important to me that teachers know the tech.

I don't think anyone in any field is going to be comfortable using something that they don't know how to use.  And beyond that, if teachers are using tech without really having a decent handle on it, it don't believe that serves the purpose of tech integration.  My goal, at least, if for students to learn technology in context and not in a box.  And, teachers knowing the technology tools works toward that end.

I met with the 6th grade teachers today about the China project.  We knew we wanted to use the classroom wiki as a collaborative tool, so I wanted to show them both how to edit the wiki.

I think that wikis are great classroom tools.  It can serve as a basic, easy to manage class site for posting info, sharing information, etc.  It's also a very easy to use collaborative tool for students.

This morning we went through the basics, and discussed some specifics of the project the students will be working on.  We thought about having them create "time travel" sites (which of course I liked) but decided against it so as not to step on the toes of the 5th grade's time travel theme.  Other ideas include doing a passport or travel type site.

I think both teachers liked the idea of student accountability with the history (and the added safety net of being able to undo edits).  They both also seemed open to using the discussion forums as both teacher tools and student collaborative tools.

We discussed the idea of students resetting their passwords.  Up to this point, students have  been logging into the site, but mostly everything they have done has not been impacted by the sign in.  Moving forward with page edits, though, their page identities will really come into play.  I floated the idea of giving students the option of changing their passwords if they were worried about having compromised them.  One of the teachers made the very true point that the most diligent students would most likely see the wisdom in changing, but the least diligent would probably have compromised their passwords without really being aware.

She suggested that we approach it as a real world situation.  In just about every company, you have to change your password every 30-90 days.  The idea made a lot of sense to me.  It gives everyone the chance to update their passwords without having to admit to having lapsed in their security.  And, it gives me a chance to get back on my password soapbox--a topic I never tire of.

I wonder if she got her idea because we all recently had to update and lock down our own passwords at VSL :)