Information whispers

I’m really keen on using wikis to manage information on my language courses.  There are so many important messages, rules, procedures, dates to inform students of – never mind all the course content that has to be negotiated!

Wikis are websites which can be edited collaboratively to share knowledge and coursework along with the important messages we as teachers are often duty-bound to pass on.

I generally start all my adult courses with a class wiki.  It can be used as a platform to store the important (and often boring!) procedures and school policies which most often students easily forget – they are understandably more keen on starting the actual course and getting to know their classmates and teacher.  At their most basic level they can be used as a simple online platform for displaying and stroing course information which students can easily refer to on their mobile phones.

I personally find it really useful for posting course announcements for important course dates, in particular: end-of-course assessments, deadlines for written work, public holidays, or even rare school closures (heavy rain or surprise national holidays!).  It helps avoid the he-said-she-said chatter regarding when the next assessment is.

I really liked how this video shows how messages can become easily become distorted when passed from person to person:

I really like using PBworks as it is fairly straight forward to use.  If your learners can navigate and use Facebook and Instagram they should be fine with PBworks.

Over a language course I aim to encourage students to become more autonomous learners.  Among a number of things, this involves the students taking greater control of the wiki and posting their own information.

For a number of years I used wikispaces until it was closed in 2018.  I then returned to using PBworks, formerly PBwiki, a system I’d previously experimented with when I started using wikis in my lessons.

If you are interested in using a wiki to help your learners, I’d highly recommend PBworks.

E-cards

Getting students to send you or classmates e-cards is another way of promoting writing activities outside of the classroom.  Friends of the Earth offer this free e-card service and can be used after a vacation; why not get students to write a short postcard telling you what they’ve done!?