A wiki is a type of website that allows visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and edit and change available content. There are three different sites where you can create a wiki. They consist of Wikispaces, WetPaint, and PBWiki. The ease of the website makes for an effective tool for collaborating. Wiki's can be read just like any other website, but the power of the wiki lies within the group that is collaborating on the content of the site. The wiki is a tool that can be used in education by teachers and students. Student's can use wiki's for group reports, to compile data, and share research results they have found. Teacher's can use wiki's to work together on curriculum.
There are many different ways wiki's can be used in a classroom. Educators just should be creative, and it is sure to be hit among your students. Educators may want to choose wikis because they are free, they run on older computers, they run on slower internet services, and they are easy to use. When using wiki's learning goes up, excitement increases among the students, the ability to track student particiaption, the ability to control who joins/edits and views the wiki, and it is a great "scrapbook" of digital artifacts. Wikis are a great way to summarize lessons, collaborate notes, and promote classroom organization.
There are two negative aspects of the wiki. One concern is that it takes a vast amount of time to monitor the site, and also to keep the site updated. You do not want you wiki to turn into a site that hasn't been updated in month's or even year's. Another concern with wiki's is that members can add, edit, and delete another member's information they have posted. Sometimes this can be done purposely, and other times it can be done on accident. When working with a wiki, users want to be very careful so that they make sure they do no edit or delete another member's information. Wiki's can be protected so that they are not left open to everyone on the web.
Interesting Websites:
http://blog.aids.gov/downloads/toolkit_wikis.pdf
http://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/ict/wikiedu/
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I would definitely agree that students editing/deleting another student's information could be difficult to control and monitor (especially in the teen years when students are forming thier cliques). As a teacher, I would be concerned about how to monitor this and if any negative recourse could come to me.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think the positives out-weigh the negatives and we as educators need to figure out a solution.
I especially enjoyed this comment of yours, "the power of the wiki lies within the group that is collaborating on the content of the site." I agree that the group can make or break the wiki, which is why it is so important to ensure that students know and understand the rules. Collaboration is a good thing in almost any case, and wikis go to show just how good (or bad) collaboration can be.
ReplyDeleteWith the feature "Page Histories" you can easily revert to previous versions of the wiki if students accidentally delete some item, or if they are being purposefully destructive. Page history will help you find who made the changes and allow you to restore the page to the version prior to the changes.
ReplyDeleteSee this link for more information about how to do this if you use wikispaces.
http://www.wikispaces.com/site/features
From a Media Center aspect I think Wikis would be great tools for book reviews or book club projects. There are functions within the Wiki to see who logged in when and who did or didn't participate. And as Jeri-Lyn mentioned you can revert to a previous copy if something happens to the page.
ReplyDeleteAs a media specialist, I think wikis are a fun way to collaborate with teachers and students. At first, I was a little nervous about materials being deleted or edited, but nothing has been deleted yet :) I plan to do a wiki workshop at the end of school and during the summer to show the teachers at my school how to create and use wikis in the classroom. I
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your post as well as the articles from class, I have definitely become more interested in using wikis. They can provide a great way for students as well as teachers to collaborate. I think it could be very interesting to have wikis for students to have book discussions, like the WikEd article discussed. It mentioned having students across the district discuss books they have read on a wiki. Students could ask each other questions about the book and post their reviews. What a great activity for Reader's Workshop! It seems like wikis could even pose as a homework helper. My biggest concern is that I definitely would like to have training on the best ways to use wikis. This seems like a great thing for professional learning that the county could allow us to participate in.
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