Yesterday, the technology specialist at my school was telling me how she went to a workshop recently where she was introduced to wikis. She wants me to help her provide a professional development to teachers in the fall on creating wikis. The technology specialist at my school wants each grade level to create a wiki. She feels as though, it could be a way to communicate better with parents and keep them posted on what we are learning and other important news. However, I am sure there are other beneficial uses of wikis in terms of telecollaboration( collaborative work using the Internet for project communication) within classrooms.
A wiki is a web based application that allows a group of users to set up pages and edit pages. Some basic things to consider before starting a wiki are:
1.)Decide what features you want your wiki to have.
2.)Research the various available software packages and take a look at a few sites that operate on these systems. (ex: Mediawiki and Tiki Wiki)
3.) Choose how you want to host your wiki.
An example of an educational use of a wiki is different classrooms across different states, cities, countries can collect data and then post and share their result related to ie. weather, customs, and seasons. Data can be collected from different classroom and analyzed by students. You can also use a data collection tool such as a Survey or Google Form (I'll have to find more info about this). When researching online about wikis, I found an example of how 5 kindergarten classrooms collected data daily on bird feeders outside of their classroom. The students recorded the number of birds at the bird feeder, the color of the birds that they saw. At the end of each week, each teacher posted their results to share. What an easy use of a wiki!
A wiki kind of reminds me of a blog. Both a wiki and blog can be used to post written information, videos, and photos. Additionally, you can add comments to both. However, a wiki is more flexible in that it allows others to change what one person has written.
I created a sample wiki using wikispaces. It was very easy to set up. All I had to do was to create a username and password, along with submit my email address. I haven't done much to it, except add a welcome message to parents and teachers at my school. I could start this wiki and then have different teachers, parents, and administrators add any other information that they would like to share. Additionally, I am going to try to make a class wiki for my students and I. Here's a link to it. However, you may need to have an account with wikispaces.
Stay tuned for part 2 on Wikis! I will post more information about educational uses, as well as links to examples of wikis that have been used in classrooms!
The good thing about wikis is that they are easily used. I am sure that some of those teachers may even have their students posting data on the site (with teacher help, of course). It's an easy way to set-up a site for multiple people or classes to share information and learn from one another. I'd like to see more examples of how classes collaborated via a wiki.
ReplyDeleteYes, I would have to agree. It is very easy to set up and user friendly. I found two great examples where wikis were used to collaborate among classrooms. Take a look at the bird feeder and tooth projects. More information is on my third blog.
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