A Collaboration
of Sights and Sounds: Using Wikis to Catalog Protest Songs
Two words here jumped out at me as I
was browsing the web for applicable Language Arts lesson plans:
"Wikis" and "Protest Songs". Firstly, wikis were referenced
in Domine's Rethinking Technology in
Schools, and as I was unfamiliar with them prior to reading the text, I
thought that analyzing a lesson that incorporated wikis would be an excellent
learning experience. Secondly, I observed a lesson last year on protest songs
in a Language Arts class, so using this particular lesson would give me the
chance to see the lesson "inside- out", as it were: I might now see
the rationale and planning behind it.
Objectives for this lesson included
collaboration between pairs, (and later, the class as a whole), research and
analysis of song lyrics, compilation of said research in a class wiki, and
understanding about the collaborative nature of wikis. To start the lesson, the
teacher plays "recent" (i.e., Kanye West, Dave Matthews Band) protest
songs, and then asks students if they can think of any other protest songs. The
students then divide into pairs to research their own protest song, and
finally, compile the research collected by the class as a whole into one class
wiki. For the most part, the strategies align with the objectives; however, I
think more time should be spent by the teacher at the beginning discussing with
the students why the songs are
protest songs, rather than just indentifying
other protest songs. Additionally, the teacher might use other technologies
to compile a CD or shareable playlist with the students after the lesson to facilitate
long- term retention.
The primary technologies used in
this lesson are the Internet (more specifically, a reliable search engine) and
wikis. Students would need the Internet to research their chosen songs and subsequently
analyze them, and as two of the objectives involved wikis (understanding and
using them), they, as the other primary technology, are essential as well.
This lesson as a whole particularly applies
to two stages of Domine's "Pedagogical Development": authorship and
collaboration. Students work together, first in pairs, and then as a whole, to
format their "authored" class wiki. This is definitely a lesson I'd
like to use one day!
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