ave you ever wanted to clone yourself in
the science classroom? It seems that as
teachers, we never have enough hours in
the day to meet the needs of our students,
who are all very different, with varying interests, abilities, learning styles, and motivations. Differentiation is
frequently required to meet students’ learning needs,
but with all of the demands on our time, what are we
teachers to do? One option is to use wikis to create and
deliver differentiated science lessons or units.
The importance of differentiation
Although most teachers are probably familiar with the
demands of differentiation, it’s worth a quick review.
Curricula may be differentiated by content, process,
or product (Tomlinson 2001). For example, in middle
school, science teachers frequently teach units on
natural selection. A teacher differentiating the unit for
advanced students by content might
make the learning objectives and re-
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SCIENCE SCOPE
sources more challenging. So instead of teaching basic
learning objectives about natural selection, the teacher
might ask students to dig deeper and learn about how
genetics play a role in natural selection. A teacher differentiating the unit by process for students who are
struggling might keep the learning objectives the same
but provide more scaffolding in the form of learning
aides (e.g., structure notes or visual diagrams). Differentiating by product, a teacher keeps the learning
objectives and process the same but allows students
to express what they have learned through different
products. For example, one student might produce a
poster on the evolution of
an extinct mammal, while
another might write a paper on the topic.
The rationale for differentiation is that students
have different strengths, abilities, and experiences
that shape their readiness to learn. Learning for different students, therefore, occurs at different levels,
and researchers (e.g., Vygotsky 1978; Tomlinson et al.
2003) have discussed how teaching must be targeted
to levels that match students’ readiness to learn. While
differentiation addresses this issue, it is important to
understand that differentiation is not the same thing
as tracking, which often doomed students to remain at
the same levels of learning throughout the course of
the school year, or frequently even over the course of
their academic careers. Instead, differentiation takes
advantage of flexible grouping, in which students
are rotated frequently into different learning groups,
depending on their levels of skill in and knowledge
about a topic. For example, student A might be in an
advanced-level group for a unit on mammals, while
student B might be in a basic level. This difference
might come from the fact that student A has long
been interested in learning about mammals: She has
read a great deal about mammals, and so her content
knowledge is already at a high level. Later in the year,
student B might be at an advanced level for the unit on
chemistry because he has a home chemistry set and
has been experimenting for five years, and so his skill
level and content knowledge are high.
Differentiated learning is wonderful for students of
all ages, but it can be tricky to implement in the classroom. With many students working on different tasks,
teachers really may wish they could clone themselves
to manage everything that’s going on. How does one
teacher oversee the process?
Wikis to the rescue
Wikis are similar to websites in that they are ideal for
delivering a wealth of content: pictures, text, hyperlinks to other pages, and multimedia such as sound.
However, one important distinction between wikis
and websites is that teachers can easily and frequently change the content of wikis, and grant permission
to other people to change the content, as well. The
International Society for Technology in Education
(ISTE) has developed technology standards for students, and wikis are ideal for implementing them.
Specifically, the ISTE is concerned with the comprehensive and thoughtful integration of technology into
lesson plans. Wikis allow teachers to, at a minimum,
creatively address Standard 2 (Communication and
Collaboration), Standard 3 (Research and Information Fluency), and Standard 6 (Technology Operations and Concepts).
Most readers are probably familiar with the site
Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), which is an online
encyclopedia delivered through a wiki that enables
millions of users to update the content. Wikis abound
online, and at the time of publication, over a hundred
wiki hosting services, or “farms,” were providing access to users; five of the best known and most used
are listed in Figure 1. At most of these sites you can
sign up for a free account, although many offer paid
subscriptions, as well, which provide upgraded services, such as more storage. For education purposes,
however, the free service is usually adequate. Once
you sign up for the account, you can begin to create a
wiki. It’s that simple.
Wikis have a variety of uses in the classroom. They
can become classroom websites, sites for book groups
or clubs, and so much more. A recent study of wiki
usage (Reich, Murnane, and Willett 2012) uncovered
four top ways in which wikis were being used in K–12
classroom settings. Teachers have been using this flexible medium to share resources with each other and
with their students, assign student portfolios, provide
opportunities for students to collaborate on presentations and workspaces, and deliver content. One of the
exciting ways that teachers can deliver content is by
designing and delivering in-depth, creative curricula
in the form of differentiated lessons or units. Because
wikis are online, students, parents, and teachers can access these differentiated lessons from school or home.
Acceptable use and access
Before implementing a wiki, it’s best to lay some
groundwork having to do with technology in the classroom. Because wikis utilize the internet, make sure
you have considered internet safety and acceptable
use policies. Your school district probably already has
a policy in place, so begin by checking with administrators. If no policy exists, the web contains templates
for them (see Resource). At a minimum, the policy
should contain the name of the school district, terms
and conditions of use of the internet, a statement on
network etiquette, and a place for parental and teacher signatures. Also, you’ll want to include a statement
on the home page of the wiki suggesting that posts
from parents and students should comply with acceptable internet use policies.
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Creating and delivering Differentiated Science Content through Wikis
Figure 1
Top wiki hosting services
Wiki host
Site
Free or paid
Wikia
www.wikia.com/Wikia
Free
Wikispaces
www.wikispaces.com
Free and paid
Wetpaint Wikis in Education
http://wikisineducation.wetpaint.com
Free and paid
PBworks
www.pbworks.com
Free and paid
Wikidot
www.wikidot.com
Free and paid
Adapted from Wikipedia.
Although the example discussed below, the Amazing
Adaptations unit, is meant to be completed in class, it
is possible students will want to work on it at home. As
of 2010, 19.77% of homes did not have internet access
(United States Census Bureau 2012), and while this number is diminishing, sensitivity to the issue is important.
Options for students who do not have internet access
outside of the classroom might include (a) printing all
source materials in packets so students can read and work
on certain projects and assignments offline; (b) arranging for internet access for students at local libraries; and
(c) archiving the site offline and transferring it to a flash
Figure 2
drive to send home with students. The final option will
not allow students to access hyperlinked material, such as
links to games and activities, but it will provide access to
the wiki’s pages. To archive the wiki’s pages, simply save
the page as a web page. Your students should be able to
take the flash drive home and open the wiki for access.
The Amazing Adaptations unit
The Amazing Adaptions unit is a wiki that delivers
differentiated content about natural selection and
is used here as an example demonstrating how to
design a wiki. Readers will note that the content is
Hyperlink to “read me first” page
Hello students!
This week, we will be studying animal adaptations. Look around and become comfortable with the site, then
open the “Read Me First” document located below.
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Creating and delivering Differentiated Science Content through Wikis
Figure 3
“Read me first” page
Welcome to the “Amazing Adaptations” science unit.
Our class will work together in the coming days to explore the types of animals and adaptations they use to survive.
For this lesson, each student will do the following.
1. Take the Unit Pretest, located in the “Pages” section of the discussion group. Take this test by September 10, 2012. This test will
not be graded.
2. Email your Unit Pretest as an attachment to the instructor. Use your name and the word “Pretest” to save it. For example, Keisha
Smith would call her file “KeishaSmithPretest.”
3. You will be assigned to the Darwin or Beagle learning group based on what you already know about animal adaptations.
4. Follow the directions in the “Darwin Group Instructions” page if you are in the Darwin learning group. Follow the directions in the
“Beagle Group Instructions” page if you are in the Beagle learning group.
Let’s get started!
engaging and demanding for each level of student,
which distinguishes these activities from keepthem-busy types of worksheets. Students need to
use higher-order-thinking skills, including analysis, synthesis, application, and evaluation of ideas,
skills that are infrequently found in drill-and-kill
types of basic activities.
Standards and pretest
Imagine you’re a middle school science teacher who
needs to teach students about natural selection, and
standards in your state specify that students must be
able to do the following:
• Define what is meant by physical and behavioral
animal adaptations.
• Provide examples of physical and behavioral animal adaptations.
• Explain why animal adaptations are necessary to
survival.
However, you suspect that a number of students who
are deeply interested in science know these things already. You design a quick pretest consisting of the following items to measure students’ level of knowledge.
1. In a paragraph or two, write what you know about how
animals use adaptations to survive in the wild. Be sure
to include these words, if you know what they mean: • natural selection
• survival of the fittest
• Darwin
• evolve
• behavioral
• physical
• adapt 2. Think of an example of an animal that uses adaptation to survive in the wild and, in a paragraph or
two, describe the animal and its adaptations.
In their paragraphs, some students use the words
correctly, while others leave them out or use them incorrectly. Some students write a little, and some write a lot.
These results of the pretest indicate that some students
understand a great deal about adaptations, while others do
not. You decide to use the results of the pretest to group
students for the purposes of differentiation for this one
unit. (Over time, you can vary the types of pretests given
[e.g., using a concept diagram, an illustration, or a list
instead of a written paragraph].) You design and deliver
this unit on adaptations using a wiki to more easily differentiate instruction, for wikis allow delivery of different
types of activities to different audiences of students.
Overview of the wiki
The home page of the wiki is the entry point for students, parents, and teachers and can include multiple
colors, pictures, and links. Students begin the Amazing Adaptations unit by accessing the “read me first”
hyperlink (Figure 2), which takes them to the page
shown in Figure 3. On that page, students read instruc-
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Creating and delivering Differentiated Science Content through Wikis
Figure 4
Learning-objectives page
Students will be able to:
1.
Define what is meant by physical and behavioral animal adaptations (Darwin).
2.
Provide examples of physical and behavioral animal adaptations (Darwin).
3.
Explain why animal adaptations are necessary to survival (Darwin).
4.
Describe how animal adaptations come about through mutations (Beagle).
tions that direct them to take the pretest. The link for
the pretest is located on the home page, although it
could also be embedded in the “read me first” page. In
addition, students are provided with directions for how
to save and e-mail the pretest to the instructor.
Once students have completed and e-mailed their
pretests, you score them and assign students to either the
Darwin or Beagle group. Students in the Darwin group
need to master the basic learning objectives, which are
presented on the Darwin wiki page (Figure 4) and accessed by a link on the home page. Beagle-group students
Figure 5
have demonstrated through the pretest that they have
already mastered the three basic objectives and are ready
to move on to a more challenging advanced objective, in
this case describing how animal adaptations come about
through mutations. In Figure 4, these objectives are presented by level: Darwin for basic and Beagle for advanced
objectives. Students receive their group assignments in
person or by e-mail and next access either the “Darwingroup instructions” or the “Beagle-group instructions”
link, shown in Figure 5.
Students’ activities vary according to which group they
Bottom half of wiki home page
This week, we will be studying animal adaptations. Look around and become comfortable with the site, then
open the “Read Me First” document located below.
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SCIENCE SCOPE
Creating and delivering Differentiated Science Content through Wikis
Figure 6
Learning activities (Darwin group)
Day 1: October 4
1. Read about animal adaptations by completing the worksheet located in the link below. Print out the worksheet
and turn it in to your teacher.
Animal Adaptation Worksheet
Day 2: October 5
Next, explore the following link:
Animal Adaptation Game
Match up the animal adaptations while you beat the clock!
Day 3: October 6
1. Read about structural and behavioral adaptations.
2. Select two of the animals listed on the right of the web page: porcupine, eastern chipmunk, arctic fox, Virginia
opossum, beaver.
3. Create a list of 3-5 physical and/or behavior characteristics for each. Explain how each characteristic helps the
animal to survive.
Day 4: October 7
1. Have fun by exploring the Kratt’s Creatures website and take the quiz. Print out the quiz and turn in the results.
2. Email your ideas about your final project to the instructor.
Day 5: October 8
1. Work on your final project -due on Monday.
2. Also prepare a short (5 minute) presentation on your final project. Be sure to include what you did, why you
selected that option, and what you learned.
Day 6: October 11
1. Submit your final project to your teacher.
2. Give your presentation to the class.
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Creating and delivering Differentiated Science Content through Wikis
Figure 7
Learning activities (Beagle group)
Day 1: October 4
1. Read about animal adaptations for monotremes by completing the steps on the following website:
Adaptations of Monotremes
2. Save your work in a Word document, and email it to your teacher.
Day 2: October 5
1. Explore the following link:
Animal Adaptation Game
Match up the animal adaptations while you beat the clock!
Day 3: October 6
1. Read about Charles Darwin and natural selection.
2. Create a concept map with 10-15 concepts demonstrating what you learned from this page. Turn it in to your teacher.
Day 4: October 7
1. Have fun by exploring the Kratt’s Creatures website and take the quiz.
2. Turn the quiz into your teacher.
3. Email your idea for your final project to the teacher.
Day 5: October 8
1. Work on your final project -due on Monday.
2. Also prepare a short (5 minute) presentation on your final project. Be sure to include what you did, why you selected
that option, and what you learned.
Day 6: October 11
1. Submit your final project to your teacher.
2. Give your presentation to the class.
are assigned. Students in the Darwin group complete the
learning activities shown in Figure 6, while students in
the Beagle group complete the learning activities shown
in Figure 7. Students in both groups are exposed to engaging experiences filled with science content. Those in
the Darwin group learn about animal adaptations: They
complete a fun animal adaptation worksheet, play an
animal adaptation game, are directed to an online web
page with appropriate reading material about structural
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SCIENCE SCOPE
and behavioral adaptations, and are given an assignment
based on that content. As they progress deeper into
the unit, they take a learning quiz and work on a final
project and presentation to demonstrate their learning.
All students are provided with appropriately interesting
and challenging activities to meet their objectives. Basic
objectives need not equate to basic activities—they should
be engaging and high-level activities that are tied to the
basic learning objectives.
Creating and delivering Differentiated Science Content through Wikis
Students in the Beagle group, who have already mastered the basic learning objectives, work on learning
about the role mutations play in biological adaptations.
They are provided with this content on differentiated
websites (Adaptations of Monotremes and Charles
Darwin and Natural Selection). However, they play the
Figure 8
same Animal Adaptation game and explore the same
Kratt’s Creatures website used by the Darwin group.
Students progress through a sequence of activities
until the fifth day. At this time, both groups are instructed
to work on a final project and presentation to showcase
what they have learned (Figures 8 and 9). Again, projects
Final-project instructions (Darwin group)
Directions:
It is now time to take what you have learned and create a final project. For this project, you have a choice of two
options:
1. CREATE A CREATURE: Create a new creature that is adapted to a particular region. Your imaginary creature must have at least five physical adaptations and two behavioral adaptations. You may create it using any
material, such as clay or papier mâché, or you may carefully draw the animal. Write a short (1 page) explanation of your animal’s adaptations and explain why they are necessary to its survival.
2. ALIEN ADAPTATIONS: Write a short story about an animal coming to Earth from another planet. It is
adapted to life on its planet. It must think about the best area to settle here on Earth, and what it needs to do to
survive. Your animal is VERY intelligent and can evolve in a matter of months, which is highly unusual! Evolution
usually takes millions of years. What does it change about itself to survive and why?
All final projects are due October 11.
A rubric for the final project has been posted in the “Files” section of the wiki. Be sure you check to see how it
will be graded before you begin.
Figure 9
Final-project instructions (Beagle group)
Directions:
It is now time to take what you have learned and create a final project. For this project, you have a choice of two
options:
1. CREATE A CREATURE: Create a new creature that is adapted to a particular region. Your imaginary creature
must have at least five physical adaptations and two behavioral adaptations. You may create it using any material,
such as clay or papier mâché, or you may carefully draw the animal. Write a short (1 page) explanation of your
animal’s adaptations and explain why they are necessary to its survival.
2. ALIEN ADAPTATIONS: Write a short story about an animal coming to Earth from another planet. It is
adapted to life on its planet. It must think about the best area to settle here on Earth, and what it needs to do to
survive. Your animal is VERY intelligent and can evolve in a matter of months, which is highly unusual! Evolution
usually takes millions of years. What does it change about itself to survive and why?
All final projects are due October 11.
A rubric for the final project has been posted in the “Files” section of the wiki. Be sure you check to see how it
will be graded before you begin.
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Creating and delivering Differentiated Science Content through Wikis
are differentiated based on the content at each level.
Students in the Darwin group use the content knowledge
and skills they acquired to create an imaginary creature
adapted to a particular region, or they adapt an alien from
another planet to live in a particular region. Students in the
Beagle group apply their knowledge to either compose
imaginary diary entries from Darwin’s diary or to trace
the evolution of one species.
Students’ completed final projects are graded using a
rubric that students receive at the beginning of the unit.
Grading rubrics for final projects are presented in Figure
Figure 10
32
10 for the Darwin group and Figure 11 for the Beagle
group. These grading rubrics may be presented on their
own separate pages, accessed through the home page.
Implementing the unit
It’s a good idea to spend the first day teaching students
how to log in to the wiki site and access the wiki. You
can have them explore the wiki on their own or show
them using whole-class projection. The next day, students can take the pretest and begin to work through
the activities.
Rubric for the final project (Darwin group)
SCIENCE SCOPE
Creating and delivering Differentiated Science Content through Wikis
Figure 11
Rubric for the final project (Beagle group)
Your role as a teacher then switches to facilitator.
The material is presented to students online, so they
will need you less as a lecturer and more as a helper
who circulates from student to student, ensuring that
everyone is on task and engaged with learning. You may
be surprised to see how much learning is taking place,
and how engagement increases in your classroom as
students navigate through their list of online activities.
As students complete the wiki activities, you will
need to score them, which can be accomplished in two
different ways. You might have students print out their
assignments and turn them in to you in the traditional
way or you could have them upload assignments to
be scored. In the latter case, you would create a folder
for each student’s work (see the highlighted area in
Figure 12). The idea here is that students download
any forms they need from the wiki site, complete their
work, save it to their computers, and then upload it to
their folders. At the end of each day, you may download
their work, save it to your computer, grade it, and upload the graded files (along with appropriate rubrics)
to the student’s folder. No losing papers, no trying to
read students’ handwriting, and students can instantly
view the graded work from home or school.
Planning for collaboration
Although collaboration was not an emphasized feature in the Amazing Adaptations unit, teachers can
easily allow students to work together on projects
in this or other units. Ideas for collaboration in the
Amazing Adaptions unit include the following:
• Students complete one of more of the activities (e.g.,
the Animal Adaptation game) with a partner; this type
of collaboration can take place between students in
the same group or students in a different group.
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Creating and delivering Differentiated Science Content through Wikis
Figure 12
Home page with student folders highlighted
Student Folders
• Students work collaboratively to complete their final projects.
Other units designed with wikis might include the following collaborative efforts:
• Students form collaborative science book groups,
read the same books, and comment about them online; this effort might also include an online discussion with one or more experts in the field.
• Students create their own online wiki to complete
an inquiry-based investigation and post each of
their observations or findings.
• Students work together in learning teams to become
specialists in a topic of mutual interest and then teach
the class about the topic; students might develop
their own resources and online learning modules.
You are only limited by your imagination (and perhaps time) when it comes to how you creatively use
wikis to inspire collaborative learning.
Conclusion
Not only can you use wikis to differentiate effectively,
you can reuse them from year to year, perhaps updating the content if you find something interesting
and new. While there is a learning curve to using wikis, over time, the process gets easier as your skills
and the skills of your students improve. Wikis are a
growing part of today’s technology, and teachers and
students benefit from their unique capabilities, and
so you can feel good that you’re helping students to
learn about current technology in a meaningful way.
Instead of cloning yourself, you may find that all you
need is to find an assistant in technology. Perhaps you
will be cast less in the role of the “sage on the stage”
and more as the “guide on the side.” n
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References
International Society for Technology in Education. National
educational technology standards for students: Advancing
digital age learning. www.iste.org/Libraries/PDFs/NETSS_Standards.sflb.ashx.
Reich, J., R. Murnane, and J. Willett. 2012. The state of wiki
usage in U.S. K–12 schools: Leveraging web 2.0 data
warehouses to assess quality and equity in online learning
environments. Educational Researcher 41 (1): 7–15.
Tomlinson, C.A. 2001. How to differentiate instruction in
mixed-ability classrooms. 2nd ed. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Tomlinson, C.A., C. Brighton, H. Hertberg, C.M. Callahan, T.
Moon, K. Brimijoin, L.A. Conover, and T. Reynolds. 2003.
Differentiating instruction in response to student readiness, interest, and learning profile in academically diverse
classrooms: A review of literature. Journal for the Education
of the Gifted 27 (2/3): 119–45.
United States Census Bureau. 2012. Table 11.56. Household
usage in and outside of the home by state: 2010. In Statistical abstract of the United States. www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1157.pdf.
Vygotsky, L.S. 1978. Mind in society: The development of
higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Wikipedia. S.v., “Comparison of wiki hosting services.” http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_farms.
Resource
Internet acceptable use policy template—www.auditnet.org/
docs/internet_acceptable_use_policy_t.htm
Nancy Heilbronner ([email protected]) is an
assistant professor in the Department of Education
and Educational Psychology at Western Connecticut
State University in Danbury, Connecticut.