Greetings and welcome to the EDU 541 Wikicourse!
The course was conducted at American University during the Summer of 2007. Students in the course participated in three different types of assignments two of which you can find on this site. The first assignment was to add to the "wiki" of information and ideas about exceptionality adding in research reviews related to each of the conditions. One will find links to articles posted by the students throughout the Exceptionalities links to the left. The second assignment involved participation in our ongoing discussion forum on a variety of current issues related to teaching exceptional children, which can be read under the forums.
Why a Wikicourse?
The idea behind this wikicourse was to allow participants to develop information based on the current knowledge and research base about exceptionality and teaching exceptional children using a generative model of knowledge development. In general terms, a wiki be thought of as a multi-user interface, where individuals add to the information kept online in the wiki. The most well known wiki would likely be the wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/) where users can read and edit text within a web-based encyclopedia. Within a wiki, one can think about knowledge-checks, where multiple users add to the validity of the posted information by having it be publicly available. In the case of a wikicourse, the instructor serves as "editor-in-chief", and as you, the users and students, add information to the wiki, i will evaluate your postings, provide feedback, and in some cases, corrections. This generative model of knowledge development has value, based in the concept that one has use the information in order to understand it. Instructional design models, such as the constructivist approach, provide learners with this opportunity to use generate their own higher level conceptions of ideas. This wikicourse is very much an experiment, and it is my goal that you will have the ability to access information about exceptionality and teaching exceptional children in a variety of formats.
Attached Documents
Under the "files" link below you will find
1. EDU 541 Syllabus in MS Word format
2. Wiki How-To's which includes step by step directions for various tasks within the wiki in PDF format
Assignments
Instructions given to the students on two of the three assignments can be found below.
Course Forum
These are very straightforward. The forum are listed on the forum page, under the category ISSUES IN SPECIAL EDUCATION. You need to participate in the six forums posted under the "issues in special education" link the right. Plan on participating in each forum at a minimum of two times. You may participate in the forums in any order, but please stay with your group. Please note that you should post within the forum "thread" to which you are assigned. Since there are so many of us, I tried to break us into three groups.
I want to start off by giving you a little information on how we will use the discussion forum to achieve the goals of this course. Since we will not be meeting in person, I think its worth while to at least set out some sort of "ground rules" for how we will work together and how the forums can lead to a quality interaction.
First of all, the forums (and any other conversations or information you have or send to me) are "safe spaces". You may post comments, thoughts, opinions, or ideas without fear of prejudice. Any personal information you (or I) share in this space stays within this space — by participating in the discussion forum or accessing those forums in anyway, you are thereby recognizing that you agree to these terms and will not share any personal information of the participants in this course with anyone outside of this course. Any comments or postings that are percieved to "personally attack" any member of this course will be immediately deleted from the forum and further postings will be blocked. When talking about special education, people share personal information about themselves or their families, and this information is held in the highest confidence. Also, when talking about special education, sometimes students tend to self diagnose. For example, when we talk about the characteristics of ADHD, you might feel like YOU might be ADHD. Or you might read the information on depression and feel that you might be depressed. Please note that this is normal, and normal people often will have all of the characteristics of any particular condition, but these persons do not "have' the condition. We will talk about "frequency, intensity and duration" many times in this course — the individual who is highly involved with any particular condition is effected significantly, so much so that they cannot live a "normal" life.
Secondly, when you have any outside information you would like to share in the forum (such as links to outside web addresses, etc), please give not only the URL (the http://… stuff) but also the group that publishes the site or article and a short description of the information. This will facilitate our reading and our "talks".
Thirdly, I will check the discussion forums approximately every 24 hours (likely between the hours of 4 and 7 am EST). You are asked to check in with the forums at least once per week, ideally more often, to stay attended to our activities. In terms of your "grade" in the discussion forums, you will see that it is more likely that you will receive a higher rating on these activities when you post an average of 2-3 times a week. Less often posting likely means you are not fully participating, more often might mean that you are overdoing it a little :)
Wikipedian Assignments
You will be adding content to the main wiki areas of the course with this final assignment. For each of the conditions listed there, you are to add in your own "content". For these assignments, you should select an article, scholarly or newsworthy, to add to the descriptions of the conditions to support your own thoughts on any of the information currently posted on the wiki. You will create a NEW Page with a unique title (such as “Thoughts on Inclusion for Students who are Blind”), discuss the reading or article you found, and then describe how you think this information contributed to the knowledge base about students with that condition. For example, you might find a newspaper article on ADHD that discusses a new drug or treatment, and you can add this to the wiki pages about emotional and behavioral disorders, and share how teachers might need to be aware of this new medication and its effect on children. Or you might read something about the achievements of a person with a visual impairment, and add this to the section about blindness by describing what we might keep in mind as we think about the self-esteem of children who are visually impaired. Or you might read a scholarly article about inclusion and mainstreaming, and add this to any of the sections and discuss the debate about inclusion of those children into regular classrooms. Once you have created your NEW Page, you then need to edit the main wiki page for that condition, and add a link to your article where you think it might be appropriate. My goal is for you to add content to the site where it's appropriate. You will post to each of the areas of the wiki, so a total of 7 postings worth 30 points each.
