Wiki, walka , wikipedia, what?
As I have learned from Will Richardson's book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other Powerful Web Tools for the Classrooms a wiki is a quick and easy web authoring tool that allows for peer review and correction.
As far as the classroom goes, wikis are an awesome yet underused learning tool. I have known what a wiki is for several years. Various wikis have helped me to solve lots of problems, I had even attempted to incorporate a wiki into my teaching once. It didn't work. I had never used the tool from the content creator side. So I didn't understand how to use it. This was before the the wysiwyg input method and I didn't have the time to learn how to use it. So I left it alone and didn't think about the classroom potentials until we started talking about it in ITIS.
And now.
Wow, it is amazing how far the technology has come in. Since we stated creating our ITSopedia page I have created 4 new wiki pages for a variety of goals. One will be used in a unit I will be teaching to a class of 2nd and 3rd grade students. We will be using it as the share part of the unit. It will function like a destination report from a travel agency. However, unlike a journal, a wiki can function like an affinity space as more ideas arise and new thoughts develop the plans can be modified and adjusted to match the vision of the team and they can happen individually or with in the group. With the added benefit of saving all the edits so they can be reviewed or reverted as needed. I don't know how it will go yet, but I am excited to try it! I am also thinking about how I can use the free wiki tools that are not filtered by our district filters to all students to have their own space to create and develop thoughts and projects. A research wiki would be a whole lot more interesting the view then a PowerPoint show, and they would get more valuable skills building a wiki site.
I love your title, Kevin! Cracks me up! You were ahead of me when we started this whole thing because you at least knew what a wiki was, unlike me! I love that you are already incorporating wikis into lessons you are teaching kids at school. I am still understanding how a wiki works and how it can be used. I am no where near ready to start figuring out how to use it with a classroom of five year olds. If you ever have any ideas about that, send them my way!:)
ReplyDelete:) How indeed would you use it with 5 year olds? I have no idea. The tool is built into School Fusion, but it is very hard to use and it is the reason I was turned off to wikis for as long as I was. So that wouldn't work, creating accounts for 5 year olds can work for some programs, but wikis are very text dependent to work with and to read. The affordances of wikis don't fit with Kindergarten, at least not in a way that I can see. I can see some use with parents, but again you already have the required tool of School Fusion so does creating wikis make sense for parents? The only thing that I can see that does support the learning needs of your little learners would be using wikis that you create that are very graphical and/or auditory. Good luck! If you do find some uses that have appropriate affordance please share so that I may share.
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