Wiki

This is something completely new to me.  In fact, I hadn't really heard of wikis or their potential in the classroom until this quarter!  But I love the philosophical framework of the Wiki.  This is how I view it: It encourages collaboration, it ensures the students do the work (rather than me), they have a real purpose (use the site for revision next semester before the exam and make it available to the wider web audience when complete) and it uses some of the skills that the students use outside of the typical classroom.
I had a Middle School colleague observing me this morning and he was fascinated by the setup of the Wiki. Then once I felt confident the students knew what they were doing with the wiki, I moved into book study evaluations.  I took each book group aside and asked questions about how they had managed the group (one group used skype, one group facebook, the others face to face discussion) and then took part with the group in a discussion of the novel as a whole.  It was fascinating - and thrilling - to see how deeply the students had engaged with the novel and each other in the process.  Some of them had greater insight and engagement with the novel or characters than I did.  Only one group did not really gain from the group discussions.  That made me sad, having seen how the others had, and I encouraged them to be willing to try again in the future with different people.  My colleague also sat in on the discussion/evaluation and enjoyed that too.  he had only planned to stay for part of the lesson but ended up being there almost the whole time!