Make a free workspace easily as Peanut butter sandwich. Content
Curated by Kathy Beck 2013
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PBworks is an easy-to-use free web page that multiple people
can edit, its based on wiki technology.
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Wiki means Quick in Hawaiian
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In the classroom, Pbworks is a free tool that empowers every
student to participate in group projects.
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James has assigned a team research project. What can he do to
encourage the students to work together, share resources and create
high quality work?
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Write Publish Comment Create Publish Comment Converse Post
Ideas Respond Share Edit Collaborate Engage Blog PBworks Three
great ways to communicate with students
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Teachers often ask: Blog or Wiki? Blogs The term blog is short
for web log. On Blogs the author writes, readers comment on what
has been said. They can also include Links to web sites, other
blogs, news articles, or even pictures. Blogs allow students to
write, react and share Tutorials Wikis Students can post a lesson
summary Collaboration of notes Concept Introduction Sharing of
Important information beyond the classroom Individual assessment
projects
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Resources for Blogs
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Blogs Post a Prompt Put a biweekly writing prompt up on the
blog and have your students respond to it by a certain day. Ask
them to also comment on one of their classmates ideas, drawing a
name from a hat or rotating to be sure that all students receive a
comment from someone. Foster process writing peer-editing by asking
each student to make a suggestion for improvement to content and
mechanics (editing) of the other students submission. If you use
the approval process before allowing student responses to show, you
can skim posts to be sure there is nothing cruel or inappropriate.
Invite parents to comment back to their elementary children.
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The week in Review Appoint a weekly blog team in your
elementary classroom to write that weeks blog entry, describing the
events of the week in Room XYZ. Invite moms and dads to comment and
watch the excitement grow! Soon you will have students begging to
write the summaries. Bonus: Those who are at home due to illness
will not feel as disconnected from their classroom, a great boon
during flu season!
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Respond to a reading Practice good reading strategies and check
comprehension by asking students to respond to an assigned reading,
reflecting on how it applies to their own experience. For example,
after reading a non-fiction piece about the McCarthy Era, students
could tell about their own experiences with labeling.
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Find the facts Post a statement with no supporting facts. Ask
students to find facts to support or refute the opinion, using
links to reliable web sites and their own persuasive explanations.
This could work well for environmental issues, political issues, or
any topic that is debatable.
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Critique a web site Post a link to a web site related to a
topic your are studying and invite students to give their personal
evaluation: Does the site show bias? Does it seem well- researched?
Is it a reliable source?
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Comment on current events Post a link to a current events story
and ask students to comment on its implications in your local
community or their own lives. Even young students can respond to
stories from the local papers online pages.
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Write a sports story (gr 3-12) Report on a vacation or long
weekend (gr 1-12) Post from an educational trip (gr 1-12) Role-play
a point of view (gr 3-12) Meet during snow days and unexpected days
off (gr 3- 12) Report on a field trip or virtual field trip (gr
2-12) Write a neighborhood or community tour with pictures (gr
1-12) Bounce around a hot topic (gr 6-12) Make a suggestion box
blog (gr 2-12) Question blog (gr 2-12) sort of an electronic KWL
Chart! Study hint blog (gr 4-12)Give extra credit for study hints
posted before a test or quiz. Fitness blog (gr 2-12)Encourage
students to post ideas for healthy eating and exercise.
Organization tips (gr 4-12)Invite students to share tips for how
they stay organized,
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Recipes for success (gr 5-12) At the end of a unit, a marking
period, or even school year, have students write recipes for
success in that unit, class, etc. These can remain for others to
try in the future. Encourage actual recipe format, including
ingredients and procedure. Recipesfor real (gr 4-12) As you study
fractions, world languages, or different cultures, nothing is more
popular than using recipes. Have your students share one on the
class blog then comment if they try one that another student
posted. Blog Ice Breaker (gr 6-12) Use student-selected pseudonyms
to register your student users (they must tell only you what their
secret identity is) and allow them to comment outside of class on
hot topics from class discussion for a few weeks. After a few
weeks, ask in class if anyone thinks they know who each f the
pseudonyms REALLY is and if they can match all pseudonyms to actual
classmates. Four Images (gr 6-12) Ask each student to use four
images (edited at will) to "sell" or "tell" about himself/herself.
Lab research collaboration (gr 7-12) In a high school science
class, encourage students to share lab data they found and
collaborate in writing up lab reports on the class blog. You can
require lab report format, but other lab partners can read and
comment on reports they feel are great (or lacking). This also
allows students to see the variety of data collected from the
class. Continuing Stories (gr 2-12) Start a blog story (set up the
setting, characters, and initial situation in an opening paragraph)
and let each student who visits comment by adding a sentence or
two. Continuing Vocabulary (gr 6-12) Start a blog story at the
beginning of the year as you begin vocabulary in your English
class. Each week, require students to add to the story, using a
LOGICAL sentence that both fits the story and uses one of that
weeks vocab words. Find a Sister Community(gr 6-12) Just as real
communities often form relationships with other towns in other
states or countries, your class blog community can set up a direct
link with another class blog reading the same play or studying the
Civil War at the same time.
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What is the difference between a wiki and a blog? A blog, or
web log, shares writing and multimedia content in the form of posts
(starting point entries) and comments (responses to the posts).
While commenting, and even posting, are open to the members of the
blog or the general public, no one is able to change a comment or
post made by another. The usual format is post-comment-comment-
comment, and so on. For this reason, blogs are often the vehicle of
choice to express individual opinions. A wiki has a far more open
structure and allows others to change what one person has written.
This openness may trump individual opinion with group
consensus.
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Resources for Wikis
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Wiki ideas appropriate for most subjects and grade levels:
Study guides made by student groups for themselves and peers:
Vocabulary lists and examples of the words in use, contributed by
students The wiki as the organizational center -all assignments,
projects,collaboration,rubrics etc Products of research projects,
especially collaborative group projects: civil war battles,
artistic movements, the American electoral process, diseases and
prevention, etc. Remember that the products do not have to be
simply writing. They can include computer files, images, videos,
etc. An annotated collection of EXAMPLES from the non- school world
for anything: supply/demand, capitalism, entrepreneurship,
triangles, alliterations, vertebrates or invertebrates, etc.
Include illustrations wherever possible. What I Think Will Be on
the Test wiki: a place to log review information for important
concepts throughout the year, prior to taking the high stakes test,
AP test, or final exam. Students add to it throughout the year and
even from year to year.
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An everything I needed to know I learned in Ms.Teachernames
class wiki where students add their own observations of ways the
class knowledge has spilled over into the real world. A travelogue
from a field trip or NON-field trip that the class would have liked
to take as a culmination of a unit of study: Our (non) trip to the
Capital and what we (wish) we saw. Articles by students who miss
school for family trips, written about their travels on the class
wiki, relating what they see to concepts learned before they left:
An FAQ (or NSFAQ- Not So Frequently Asked Questions) wiki on your
current unit topic. Have students post KWL entries and continue
adding questions that occur to them as the unit progresses. As
other students add their answers, the wiki will evolve into a
student-created guide to the topic. Example: Civil War FAQ or
Biomes FAQ. You may find that the FAQ process can entirely supplant
traditional classroom activities, especially if you seed a few
questions as the teacher. This would also depend on whether you
have consistent computer access on a daily basis, a luxury many
schools do not have.
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Science Fair Projects - A wiki could be set up for middle or
high school students to brainstorm ideas for and plan science fair
projects. Initially it would mostly be brainstorming, posting ideas
and information to back them up. As they begin to flesh out the
ideas that they are interested in, small groups might form to work
on individual projects, but could still contribute ideas to other
projects. The teacher can act as a facilitator by offering
suggestions and asking probing questions to get students to
consider particular aspects in the planning of their projects. The
wiki could also be used to record and organize data, and plan
eventual papers/presentations. Collaborative Textbooks - From
Edutopia (the magazine) for September/October 2004, the article
"Crack the Books" (p. 14) describes the California Open Source
Textbook Project (COSTP) which is an initiative to create online
textbooks using wiki software and then eventually create printed
copies. The founder of the project contends that most of the
information in K-12 textbooks is in the public domain. The project
aims to help California slash its $400 million dollar textbook
budget. You can visit the project online at World History
TextbookWorld History Textbook Student Portfolios - A wiki makes an
easy shell for electronic portfolios where students can display and
discuss their work with others. It would also be an excellent forum
for peer editing and peer feedback to help students improve their
writing skills. WikiOrganization - I used a local wiki on my
computer to organize materials for a paper. I was able to save
weblinks, documents, and quotes to the wiki and then just go to
that particular page as I was writing. Finally, I linked the final
product to the wiki. Wikis are a great organizational tool
especially in a time when many of our classroom resources are
digital and networked. Collaborative Understanding - If I were to
teach middle school music again, I would try to use a Wiki as part
of a music history/music study project for students to clarify
their understanding of different styles of music. For example, back
in the day, I had 2 or 3 classes of "beginners" each year. As we
listened to different examples of music and of singing, I tried to
help them understand how the different styles were related to each
other (i.e., blues and hip hop). Using a Wiki would allow them to
also share links to examples of music to support their ideas and
opinions. I would then try to incorporate this project into one of
our choir concerts to show that learning about music is about more
than just singing or playing an instrument. (And this is based on
the assumption that we would have access to computers in the
school, and that the students would be able to use the computers
after school if they did not have a computer at home.)
Collaboration Between Teachers - The person I'm doing my consulting
project with, after seeing our wiki and learning how they work,
suggested using them for teachers to teach collaboratively, which
is a use I hadn't thought of originally but could have a lot of
potential. They could work together creating lesson plans, track
how the lessons are being implemented in their various classrooms,
give suggestions - this could be a few teachers in the same middle
school doing an interdisciplinary unit, or teachers of the same
subject in distant places working on the same unit together.
Literature Circles in Elementary School - Elementary students, in
our district have Lit Circles. They all read the same book and then
are required to answer questions about the material and pose
questions. A Wiki would be a perfect way to integrate technology
into their Lit Circles. Instead of sharing their thoughts on paper,
they could post them to the wiki, respond to their peers thoughts
or questions and best of all preserve this work for the next class
to review at sometime during their exploration of the same novel.
Each of our elementary classrooms has at least two computers.
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Wiki ideas for math: A calculus wiki for those wicked-long
problems so the class can collaborate on how to solve them (a
wicked wiki?) A geometry wiki for students to share and rewrite
proofs (a geometwiki?). What a great way to see the different
approaches to the same problem! Applied math wiki: students write
about and illustrate places where they actually used math to solve
a problem. Procedures wiki: groups explain the steps to a
mathematical procedure, such as factoring a polynomial or
converting a decimal to a fraction. Pure numbers wiki: student
illustrate numbers in as many ways possible: as graphics to count,
as mathematical expressions, etc. Elementary students can show
graphic illustrations of multiplication facts, for example.
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Wiki ideas for science: A student- made glossary of scientific
terms with illustrations and definitions added by the class (using
original digital photos or those from other online Creative Commons
sources, such as Flickr). Linking to separate pages with detailed
information would allow the main glossary list to remain reasonably
short. A taxonomy of living things with information about each
branch as you study Biology over a full year. Designs of
experiments (and resulting lab reports) for a chemistry class.
Observations from field sites, such as water-testing in local
streams, weather observations from across your state, or bird
counts during migratory season. Collaborate with other schools.
Detailed and illustrated descriptions of scientific processes: how
mountains form, etc. A physics wiki for those wicked-long problems
so the class can collaborate on how to solve them (a wicked
wiki?).
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Wiki ideas for social studies: A mock-debate between
candidates, in wiki form (composed entirely based on research
students have done on the candidate positions). A collaborative
project with students in another location or all over the world: A
day in the life of an American/Japanese/French/Brazilian/Mexican
family. (This one would require finding contacts in other
locations, of course). A collection of propaganda examples during a
propaganda unit. Detailed and illustrated descriptions of
governmental processes: how a bill becomes a law, etc. A fan club
for your favorite president(s) or famous female(s). A virtual tour
of your school as you study our community in elementary grades. A
local history wiki, documenting historical buildings, events, and
people within your community. Include interviews with those who can
tell about events from the World War II era or the day the mill
burned down, etc. Allow adult community members to add their input
by signing up for membership in the wiki. This project could
continue on for years and actually be a service to the community.
Perhaps the area historical society would provide some assistance,
if you can get them to think beyond the closed stacks of their
protected collections! A document-the-veterans wiki for those in
your community who served in the military. Interview them and
photograph them, including both their accounts and your students
documentation and personal reflections on the interviews. A travel
brochure wiki: use wikis to advertise for different literary,
historical, or cultural locations and time periods: Dickens London,
fourteenth century in Italy in Verona and Mantua ( Romeo and
Juliet), The Oklahoma Territory, The Yukon during the Gold Rush,
Ex-patriot Paris in the Twenties, etc.
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Teachers often ask: Blog or Wiki? Blogs Sarah Plain and Tall
Summer Reading CampSummer Reading Camp To Build a Fire Wikis
Fractions Crayons Float What is it? Carbon Fighters Stay
Current
It's so easy to create a site to help guide students along with
projects. I have found that it's a good way to make handouts
available to students - I just point them at the web address. I
post links to my PBworks Rockford's site so that parents can access
project guidelines as well. Justin Wylie Rockford High School
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How can she make certain her online site is off limits to child
predators? How can she be sure that her students wont be drawn onto
the web? Mary wants to be sure her students are protected from the
wider internet.
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YOU control who sees your workspace You invite your students
Each student has a unique login and password
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PBworks for Educator are free and never display advertisements
NO ADS
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Jamie wants to make certain her students act appropriately on
line. Will her students write offensive comments? How can she
monitor her students activity?
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You have a history of every edit You are notified of every
change
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No more dog ate my homework Edits are time stamped. You know
who made changes and when they were made.
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PBworks is Free and Easy to set up No IT department is
needed!
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Simply create a password and begin
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Set it up and it works just like typing in Microsoft Word
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Just like creating a Word document Easily insert Images and
Video Just click and begin
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Post a picture or a video
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Teachers can make coursework and homework information easily
available to both students and parents. With easy to use plugins
you can create a calendar.
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Quickly create new pages Templates designed with teachers in
mind
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For more ideas check out the PBworks educator page. You can
find tips, suggestions, templates and a community of fellow teacher
users. http://pbworks.com/education
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Join the more than 400,000 teachers who have used PBworks for
their classrooms, from elementary schools to Stanford and Harvard.
http://cougarpedia.pbworks.com/
http://mrsangelacunningham.pbworks.com http://missb.pbworks.com
https://andreclass.pbworks.com/
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PBworks is free, fast and easy to use. Create one now at
www.PBworks.com
