Tuesday, November 16, 2010

low-level management

We're a wiki school. Lots and lots of students use wikis. Lots and lots of teachers use wikis. Everyone uses wikis differently, but one thing is a constant: signing up.

There are three levels of wiki sign up and it pays to have a clear plan for signing up whenever a teacher goes about class-wide sign up.

- Ask students to choose which level of wiki user best fits:
  1. Have wiki account and knows necessary log-in information
  2. Have wiki account, but does not remember password
  3. New to wikispaces
- Begin by working with the #1's. Have them log-in and then go to the wiki for their class.
- Move on the group #2. Have them go through the necessary steps to retrieve their passwords.
- Work with the newbies, but encourage shoulder partners (presumably some #1's and #2's) to provide support.

Congratulations! You've completed a required step in an efficient manner. Yes, you could have assigned this sign-up process as homework, but you realize that going through this process as a class is, like many other whole class activities, valuable.

And having everyone do this in class sends the message that the wiki is important.