Wikis would be a great tool to use in schools with students as well as teachers. Students could use wikis to help collaborate on group projects and could also be used to help facilitate class discussions. With teachers, wikis could allow for communication between various grade level teams that do not have any common planning times to discuss events and issues going on in the school or even simple things such as schedules and special events going on in the school.
My school has created a wiki to allow us to share information about events going on in the school or important announcements. Anytime a grade level plans a special assembly or event, a teacher from that grade level can update the wiki with the information so that all staff members can keep up on what is going on in the school. Currently we have made the settings so that all administrators, grade level representatives, the library media specialist, and myself (tech. integration teacher) are editors and can create and modify anything on the wiki. All other teachers and staff members are currently just able to view the wiki, but not make changes. Since this is the first year we have tried out using the wiki, we didn't want to have too many users editing and making changes to the wiki.
This is the current front page of my school's wiki.
The wiki site we use at my school (and I believe throughout Baltimore County) is PBworks.
Does anyone else use wikis at their school with either the staff or students? How do you use wikis in your educational setting?
It sounds like you have ideas for using Wikis with students, but you haven't yet. Is that true?
ReplyDeleteI have a wiki that I use frequently. I began using it as more of a discussion tool, but it ha evolved. I would highly suggest taking next school year and experimenting! My students have used polldaddy.com to create polls (some for fun, and some related to their readings) and have learned how to embed the polls into the site. They are also learning how to create and use Voki's. In addition, they have written plays (where each student can use the site to write a portion, making sure it connects to the previous student's part). We also use the site as a tool for sharing our book reviews. From the short time I have used the wiki in my classroom I have come up with a list of uses for next year.
ReplyDeleteThis website is extremely helpful: http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/wikiideas1.cfm
You mentioned something about student wikis. At our school (a BCPS school) the libraian said that students were not allowed to have their own wiki. She said if we wanted them to create or upload things they had to do it through the teacher wiki and just have their own page from our wiki.
ReplyDeleteOne of our teachers had their students working in the same groups throughout the year. Throughtout the year as the group came up with documents or questions they could use their group wiki page to post the items. That way everyone could have access to them at home or whereever they were at.
I am also in BCPS and at the elementary level we couldn't get student accounts for wikis. However, last year I was able to use my wiki account with the students to help them participate in an art contest (Beyond Words Challenge) with the help of our art teacher. Students created art projects, scanned them in or took digital pics of them, and then they had to compose a short paragraph about their artwork. These paragraphs and uploaded art work were posted to a county wiki where students from all BCPS schools could then go and vote for their favorite art pieces.
ReplyDeleteBCPS just bought huge licenses for PBWorks. I kow it is for at least secodary schools so it might be at elementary schools as well. During the summer time we will be getting the chance to experiment with the wiki as we devise ways to make it useful.
ReplyDelete