Friday, April 25, 2008

Doin' stuff, learning things.

This week has been awesome because I forced my class to edit Wikipedia as one of their assignments, and they did because it was required. I wasn't sure how it would work out, whether or not they would get things working, whether it would be worthwhile. But most of them completed all the activities, and despite some initial deletions of articles they had created, I think my students found the experience to be a good one. There were many comments about how they didn't realize how easy it was to edit Wikipedia. And of course, before I forced myself to try so that I could compel them to do so, I didn't know how easy it was either. In general I am in favor of learning activities in which the learner is challenged to try new things. It's great fun to watch and to see them learn.