At NCETC yesterday, I facilitated the “Using Mobile Technology to Differentiate Instruction” workshop using a wiki. (This wiki is set up to be used to facilitate a F2F workshop, such as we did at NCETC, or to be used as a self-guided learning experience. It is also Creative Commons licensed, so you can use it at your own school or district.)
My goal of the workshop was to present less and have participants do more. Using a wiki and letting participants structure their own time (within some suggested guidelines) was a way to allow everyone to differentiate their learning. This was especially important because participants had a variety of mobile devices (Palm, PPC, iPods, laptops, etc.) and because everyone had different experience levels (as learners always do).
I was interested in the participants’ comments afterwards on how they felt it went. They liked it. One person said that she felt that she was able to really focus on her own learning without having to pay attention to what was being presented. 🙂
I too liked the format. I’ve played with using a wiki to guide a workshop a couple times now, and I’ve almost got it down. It’s a little uncomfortable for me as a “teacher” to not be “teaching,” but I’m seeing the benefits. It also helps to have a group that is assertive about their learning needs — which we all should be.
While we all thought this structure worked well, we agreed that a relatively small group was needed to make it successful. I would say a max would be 15 participants. With more than that, the one-on-one support that was needed for individual questions would be too hard. (Unless of course you had 2 facilitators, but I haven’t figured out how to clone myself yet.)
I look forward to providing more workshops in a wiki format and am especially excited about the opportunity for remote participants to be able to access these materials.