Hello!

I'm Peter, and I've started this blog to keep a record of the Wiki-based project I'm about to start up with my young learners here at the British Council in Muscat, Oman.

So in this post, I'd like to let you all know what the project is all about, and how it's going so far.

Firstly, then: in around one month from now, I'm going to walk into a classroom of the highest level students we teach here in Muscat. They are overachievers, they're on their summer holidays, and they're going to want to do something challenging and fun (about an hour and a half later, I'm going to walk into another class full of similar students,too, and do all the same stuff - the only difference will be the places the learners choose to go with it).

My answer to this challenge is to let the students loose on the Internet. To get them started, I've set up a wiki which is at

britishcouncilmuscat.wikispaces.com

This wiki is empty at the moment, but over the next couple of weeks it's going to start filling up with lots of interesting (I hope) stuff - for example, Voicethreads, Xtranormal cartoons, podcasts, timelines, weblinks, comic strips, interactive maps, presentations... and just about anything else online which I can find an interesting use for.

And then... in that first class, I'll fire up this wiki and the students will be invited to have a look and see what they can see. I'll ask them to make notes of the different tools, gather URLs, think about different uses for the tools I used, and think about which ones they liked (I might even create a worksheet for this - watch this space, or leave a comment if you think it's a good idea!).

The next few days will involve the students being put into groups, and then given a challenge - for example, create a users guide to Voicethread - using Voicethread! - and set to work. Once they have all finished these tasks (and if you have any ideas for how to cope with them all finishing at different times, let me know!) we'll have a look at them and choose the best.

From that point on, we're into uncharted territory. We should be approaching the end of the first week (out of 4). My plan is to get the students to form groups with three or four people they want to work with, and then choose from a list (or from their own ideas) what sort of thing they want to create next. They can use the wiki I mentioned above for ideas. They will need to plan in quite a lot of detail - writing scripts, researching photos, making storyboards.

One thing I haven't decided yet is whether all the students will have to do the same things all at the same time. This would make sense from an administrative point of view, but not so much so from one of creativity. Any views?

That's it for now, then - but watch this space for updates on how things go in the run-up to the classes beginning.