I could not wait to write a post about what I learned looking through these wikis! I have been hearing the word wiki for about a year now and no one ever explained to me what they were so I pretty much wrote the term off as just another computer thingy that I will probably never use. After reading about them and looking through some of the examples given to us, I am thrilled to learn about them. I can already imagine so many uses for wikis both for the students and for me as a teacher. First, I would love to organize a project where the whole grade level does an author study and each class could create projects for different books by that author to share on the wiki. Students could even collaborate amongst the grade level not being tied to only the other students in their own class. The wiki SaluteToSeuss - home is a perfect example of this use of a wiki. Also, I would think that teachers could collaborate/plan together with their own or other grade levels using a wiki. This would allow input among the various teachers. On my campus, the 2nd and 3rd grade teachers have been attempting to communicate with each other better in order for us to assist each other in helping students prepare to use skills taught more effectively.
I loved the ability to basically reach out to the entire world using a wiki. The following wiki is used by students to post questions that they formulate. Then, their goal is to receive 1000 responses- Monsonclassroom Wiki - home. This would open up a whole new world of possibilities for students to get different perspectives on a problem or question.
Another interesting and fun wiki was schoolsthen - home. This wiki allowed students to interview parents/grandparents and compare/contrast schools from their youth to current schools. What an update to the old-fashioned Venn diagram idea!
Students can really benefit from reading others' ideas about a difficult concept such as "What is a utopian society?" This wiki- The Discovery Utopias - home lets students work together to create a conceptual utopian society. Students can compare their idea of a perfect world to the ideas of others and get completely different perspectives on the same idea.
All in all, even if I had a hard time setting up a wiki of my own, there are so many great ones out there already that I'm sure I could find one for my students to participate in. The wiki Home - Primary Math looked easy to manipulate and might make for a perfect start for a beginner like me. I really want to play around with this tool more now that I am seeing all the possibilities.
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I LOVE your idea of having the students use a wiki to share author works that they are studying.
ReplyDeleteI really like the 1000 responses blog. I especially liked the discussion page bc a teacher from China reached out to the class! I had never thought of the idea of connecting with the rest of the world through wikis! Thanks for checking that one out!
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