I have to admit that the only experience I have with wikis is when our school district set one up for teachers to collaborate lesson plans - it wasn't used and I lost my password. With that said, I am excited about using a wiki in the classroom. I can think of many uses for them.
One being just a place to organize classroom material for the students. Having each unit up with all the attachments that they would need for that unit. It seems like a place to organize material and I have to keep reminding myself that it is a collaboration tool.
I liked the idea of having students share novels with one another. I have my students read various novels about the Holocaust, but due to time they each can only read one or two. It would be neat to have them summarizing on responding to the novel they read on a wiki that the other students had access to and could learn from. They would all get exposure without reading all the novels.
I also have considered using a wiki for a mythology unit were the students each have to research a Greek god. The sidebar could be the different Greek gods and students could contribute information they have found to the different categories that would be used in a final project.
I think that there would be several challenges, starting with whether or not I could have students access the page from the school computer lab. I also think that it would have to be a graded assignment/expectation to have students editing and adding to a wiki. If it wasn't I worry that it wouldn't get used like the one at my school.
I created an account on PBWikis, but I am not sure how I want to initially organize it or for which idea. I would like my wiki to be set up for my final project, which I keep changing. More to come...
I will share that as I sat here writing this I had an idea. I am currently working on a committee to adopt new text books for Language Arts in our district. Several text book reps. came to present their materials to us last week, but we didn't have time to discuss our thoughts afterwards. The other teachers on the committee are all at different schools...maybe I need a wiki.
My wiki: http://englishz.pbworks.com/
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Hi Trista,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry that I couldn't remember which class we were in together...they all run together! :(
I love the idea of using a wiki to work through the process of textbook selection. We went through that 2 years ago, and it was a long process. THere are times when having the physical materials is great, but if you were to set up the different company pages then have questions or areas of focus for people to respond to. Having it be too free form might be just too much to be effective.
Great idea!
I would definitely make editing and adding part of the evaluation. I'm experimenting with my students in studying The House on Mango Street vignettes, and the writing is sometimes atrocious. I explicitly stated in the directions that they needed to post accurate summaries, both factually and grammatically, and I'm finding that the second part needs work. I've even opened it up to all in the class...if they see an error of someone else's, they can fix it. It's all for the greater good of the class, right? :-)
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