Teacher Knows Best?

So, it's now the second week of the second wiki project. There are now two of us on the case - myself and another teacher called Ben Cook.

This time around, we've done much more classroom based stuff, and things are slightly more teacher led. We're trying to do one "project" per week, with the end result being something that can be put onto a wiki. At least one day a week, there is no input at all, and the students just work on whatever they have to do.

My classes have two projects ongoing at the moment. The first is based on the Oman Sail project - an initiative by the Omani government to promote sailing amongst young people around the country. Already they've sent one sailor on a non-stop around the world trip (in Ellen MacArthur's boat); and they have other sailors competing in yacht races globally. Members of the Oman Sail team have come in to the BC to meet the students and let them taste the food and wear the clothes used on board the around-the-world trimaran. The students are now making projects about the Oman Sail project.

The other project is to create a business plan/project to improve Oman. For the younger group, this is aimed at getting them to think critically about Oman's young people and how to encourage them to think positively about how to improve the future for Omani people. They have to think of a project wehich will encourage young Omani's to put down the Playstation Portables and try to develop their country. For the older group, the idea is to look at Oman now, and think of ways to improve it. So things like charities and NGO's which haven't yet arrived in Oman. The students need to create web-based presentations which demonstrate what their projects entail exactly, and why there is a need for them.

So there is a mix of work going on - lots of new vocab, since this is the area I feel my students seem most lacking in (much like even native speaking teens, my students seem to have quite a small but generally adequate base vocabulary; but struggle with words of lower frequency); some critical thinking about themselves, their identity, and their role in the future of their nation; and web-based work.

I think this approach is working better than before. I feel the students are learning more. So, although it's less in line with my own principles of being as student led as possible, I feel confident that it's more helpful. As I saw with the last project, the students will quite happily create wikis which reflect their social interests (one student told me that now, two weeks after class finished, they are still using the wiki to keep in touch - and that's wonderful!); but it then becomes hard to scaffold the students' work and make it into something greater than it would be without my input. It also becomes tricky to lead the students into areas they wouldn't normally go to. So for now, I'm happy to have a slightly more teacher-led wiki project.