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Welcome to our Master's Seminar Inquiry in Teaching and Learning Wiki.

Yes, this course is **//Master’s Seminar: Inquiry in Teaching and Learning.//** And yes the focus of your capstone project is to develop coherent and comprehensive learning experiences around social justice leading to meaningful growth for your learners and empowering them to be positive change agents. While this is //__not__// an instructional technology course, a wiki is the platform you will use for collaborating with a classmate(s) and me as you create curriculum. Why? 1) Too often teachers are isolated and this will provide you a valuable experience in collegiality. (FYI- A Wiki’s Manage Course feature keeps a record of who posted what when. So as a teacher you can keep tabs on each contribution and address if people are not participating responsibly and fairly. Helpful feature -don’t you think?) 2) It is 2011, classroom teachers are using wikis. Change and challenges are healthy opportunities for learning and growth! 21st Century thinking is informed by a “belief that learning must leverage the affordances of new technologies, employ better pedagogies based on recent research on how people learn, and be cognizant of the characteristics of a new breed of learners.” [] 3) By capitalizing on creating your wiki, rather than “talking about” a wiki’s capacities, you will directly learn its potential. Often I hear future teachers say something to the effect of, “I am really busy right now. I can learn that later.” Trust me, you will always be busy, so let’s grapple together and turn to each other for support! 4) You can actually use your wiki in the future with your elementary students. This is not an exercise in theory. There is a direct link to practice. So as you thoughtfully develop your wiki, always be mindful of really using it as one effective approach in your pedagogical repertoire. 5) By becoming members of everyone's wiki, you will have immediate access to the curriculum each of you craft. In fact, you can contribute to each others' wikis. 6) No paper! Environmentally and economically sound. 7) In this highly competitive job market, you can state in an interview that you and a colleague created a wiki and offer to invite your future employer as a user. I guarantee you this will not hurt your prospects!

So be receptive and be open.

Please do not think of this as- I have to develop social justice curriculum ** and ** create a wiki too. Take the approach of- I am creating substantive learning I am really excited about (so odds are your students will be enthused too) and I am using my wiki to engage my learners and promote collaboration.

I do not expect you to create the best wiki ever. All learning starts with baby steps and progresses from there. See rubric that describes qualities of an exemplary wiki (posted on our Moodle site Wiki module) to guide your efforts. However, you will earn your grade based on the capstone rubric.

You will be gratified by the learning process and product (although with a wiki- there is never a “final” product…)

So...... Please CREATE your wikispace at www.wikispaces.com - you will first need to register an account. For help on registering an account, please see the document on Moodle here.

Now that you have an account, you are ready to create your first wiki. See the screen shot below for an example.
 * 1) Click CREATE NEW WIKI and give your page a title using this format: **Project name-Last Name-First Initial-FA11** (do not use spaces in your title, nor underscores - wiki does not like).
 * 2) Make the page **Protected** - so that only those allowed to edit may
 * 3) And set the Wiki Type to **K-12 Education**.



So now that you have created your wiki - please ADD the link to **your** wiki in the appropriate class section's wiki. There are instructions for copying the URL on your section page.

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