Week 3 - Wikis

It was great to watch and read about wikis. I had used a wiki one other time when I took a class through the Kent ISD called “23 Things”. The class was all about 23 web 2.0 tools that you could use in the classroom. I hadn’t really given much thought about wikis since that class. Now that I have used them again, I can see them being used in several ways. One such way that I can see them being used is for collaboration for group projects. Students could create pages for all parts of their project. They could have a page for listing items that need to be done, a page for who is assigned to do those tasks and create a page for each task. An example of this would be a group of students that had to do a project on a country for their geography class. The pages inside their wiki could be one for language, religion, cultural traditions, description of land and etc. I can also see wikis being used by students to get feedback from classmates on different topics.
The middle school were I teach is even looking at using wikis to post our homework hot-line on. I see the school having a page to update upcoming events and then that wiki page having links to the various pages that each teacher has created. Teachers would have to make sure they update them on a regular basis, whether that is daily or weekly. I’ve been asked to help assist in this. I’m looking forward to see how it is accepted by my staff and to see if the students and parents will use it. Currently not many students or parents use or phone line homework hot-line. The more options that we give parents and students to stay informed, the better our students will perform.
The other way that I can see wikis being used is to create a compiled list of resource for students on the different topics that I discuss in class. This would be really useful for those students that have trouble finding quality information when the do searches on the Internet. Students can get to work quickly and can stay focused on the topics at hand. The only time I wouldn’t have them use this if I was assessing them on being able to find valuable or pertinent information from the web.
I’m looking forward to seeing what other ways you all have come up with to use wikis.