Vocabulary wiki in Middle School German Class
In response to the assignment:
This week, you will design two technology-based learning activities for your target group of learners. In the Learning Activities section of the wiki, find your page and post to it a description of two learning activities you design for your learners. Explain 1) your learning goal or what you hope to accomplish with each one, 2) describe the technology you will use, and 3) justify your choice of technology or technologies based on the cost, usability, and how well it addresses your learning goal. Provide links and descriptions of any Web-based resources you will use.
Activity A — Vocabulary Wiki Activity
(1) Vocabulary acquisition is central to all levels of language learning, and especially at the early stages, such as I teach at Fort Couch Middle School. In middle school German Classes it is easy to reduce units of study to lists of words to be memorized for the upcoming quiz. This is a dangerous area, as students are experts at rote memorization for an assessment, only to immediately discard all of that ‘learning’ as soon as the test is done
Additionally, students in my classes do not have a ‘textbook’ per se. Students know how to use online German-English dictionaries such as http://dict.leo.org but these results are often too ‘raw.’ It turns out that middle school students are pretty bad at using the dictionary to help them find German words. They can look up the meaning of German words with some success because they understand the context of the English words that are offered as meanings. When faced with the opposite scenario, students just grab at the first word that appears in the results, often using the word in the wrong context.
By using a student-generated wiki as a resource for content appropriate and previously learned vocabulary and grammar, students will be provided contextually appropriate definitions and examples of use that have been created and vetted by their classmates.
My learning objectives are:
Create a usable student generated reference
Find and correct errors in the wiki
Use “fair-use” content to enhance the vocabulary wiki entries
These objectives directly address the Communications Standard of the National Standards for Foreign Language.
COMMUNICATION
Communicate in Languages Other Than English
Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.
CONNECTIONS
Connect with Other Disciplines and Acquire Information
Standard 3.1: Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language.
COMPARISONS
Develop Insight into the Nature of Language and Culture
Standard 4.1: Students demonstrate understanding of the nature of language through comparisons of the language studied and their own.
For each entry, students are required to provide the English meaning for their German word, provide relevant grammatical information (gender of nouns, stem-changing verbs if any, verb conjugation tables), a sentence using the word, and a fair-use picture to enhance the definition.
(2) For this project I use the Wiki tool that is included in the BlendedSchools.net delivery of BlackBoard. This wiki features an easy to use WYSWIG (what you see is what you get) editor, and an intuitive clean looking interface. By nature the wiki is a ‘walled-garden’ accessible and editable only by registered students.
Other tools used in this activity are: Online Dictionaries, Creative Commons image search, and class resources, either online or in the classroom. For teaching about what a wiki is and how it works, I use the instructional video: Wikis in Plain English by CommonCraft.
Since the wiki is included with the existing software, the cost of this learning activity is not an issue. Other free wiki websites are available for educators such as pbwiki.com or wikispaces.com.
(3) This activity addresses my learning goals above, only if it is regularly updated and used by all members of the class. Time must be dedicated during class for students to get into the habit of updating the dictionary and some sort of accountability must exist for such a project to take off in the classroom. At first, I offered extra-credit for students who contributed to the class wiki. I found that this resulted in high-quality entries, created by a few hard-working dedicated students, who frankly didn’t need the bonus points to begin with. When I required everyone to contribute a minimum amount, I found that there were many more errors, and as they ran out of new ideas, the entries became less and less contextually relevant. I feel that the latter situation is preferable, especially of part of the assignment is to find and fix errors in the the wiki.
Students, especially in my middle school, are not accustomed to this style of collaborative work, where everyone’s contribution builds value for the group. Working in a loosely structured group like this is a skill that needs to be taught to students.
Examples:
Web Resources:
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