I have been teaching a Flash elective for several years and the entire
course is on a wiki. The relevant piece to this conversation is that my
students put all of their animations on the wiki and also write about what
they create. They each have their own page and can make more pages, if
they want.
Their posts serve many uses:
- backups for their files
- a repository of all their creations
- a place for them to write notes
- a place for them to write reflections (though this is something which
they definitely grow into, and need lots of encouragement at the
beginning, perhaps because they are not used to reflecting on their
creations?)
- a place that they can share (or not, their choice) with others (family,
other teachers, students outside of the class…)
- a place for me to see all of their animations in one location and in
chronological order
- a place for them to give feedback to each other
- a place where they can learn from one another (the pages are accessible
to everyone in the class)
- a place they can easily return to when class has ended, as I have never
deleted any of the previous year's pages
Every student has their own password, and I have more than adequate
control over who can log on, post comments, and create or edit pages. At
the end of the course, the students are always pleased to see how they
have progressed as animators.
I have always considered this wiki as a portfolio in progress, and it is
particularly interesting to see what happens if upper school students
(taking a move advanced Flash class) refer back to their wiki pages from
when they took the beginning class in middle school. (So far, am not aware
this has happened, and I have not gone out of my way to suggest it, though
perhaps now that I've written this sentence…)
Catherine mentioned templated web pages; the wiki is just another form of
web page. Management of the wiki is incredibly easy, and can be organized
in any number of ways to best meet the needs of the participants.
Cheers,
Laurie
-----
Rye Country Day School
Cedar Street
Rye, NY 10580
laurie_bartels@ryecountryday.org
914.925.4562
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