Wiki+Engagement+Strategies

**__The Art of the Conversation - Engagement__**

**Wiki Power.** Wiki's provide a powerful conversational platform, but it does take a little effort to get the conversation going and keep it going. Wiki tips:
 * **__Outreach__** - Invite parents and others to your wikispace who may inspire and be good models to your students. Establish a relationship with them, helping to facilitate their engagement with your students.

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 * **__Provide helpful guidelines for Parents and others on how to engage__** - They all bring value to the conversation. Their life experiences, lessons learned, can be very constructive additions in the conversation. They can be model writers for students. You can help facilitate this. Can they model good grammar, good sentence structure, good spelling for your students? Can they be concise and thoughtful in their writing? I think so. Kids really respond when these "outsiders" show interest and care in their work, it really has shown to motivate them and get them engaged more.
 * **__It takes a Village__**: Offer Praise, Confirmation, Support, Contribute Constructive Ideas and Followup Questions to encourage critical thinking.
 * **__Recommended Discussion Topics__** (under Page Discussion):
 * Progress Reports : This discussion thread includes progress reports based on a framework you and your students define. For example:
 * Headline: (Team XYZ | Status Report Week: 4/20)
 * Team Members :
 * Date :
 * Goals this Week:
 * Activity & Task Updates: (What phase are they on, what tasks are they working on, progress/where are they, what still needs to be done)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Next Steps: (Include due dates, maybe when they plan to be done and what are the actual drop dead dates ... when stuff has to be done.)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="color: #800000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Feedback | Response : This is where you, myself, their peers, invited parents, invited subject matter experts can provide constructive feedback. There are easy and constructive ways to do this too.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When responding to a discussion post, always copy and paste the author (i.e. @BriBurnett) and part of the text that you are responding to so the reader can easily follow. use quotes around all it or brackets "[ ]" or the wikispaces formatting techniques for //italicizing// and **bolding.**
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="color: #800000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Team ProjectXYZ | Chatroom : This is an option where they can hang out online and work together, like a bulletin board devoted to the team's collaboration outside the classroom. You might require this so you can use it for your own assessment.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">**__Turn on Notifications__**. Make sure all members turn their notifications ON so they receive email notifications regarding any wiki updates. This make it easy for them to respond in a timely manner. See below. //(This will not apply to accounts that have no email association)//





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