During my undergraduate
degree from Columbus State University we learned a little bit about
Wikispaces. My mom is actually the
Director of Instructional Technology for Muscogee County School District and
she started showing me all of the many capabilities of a Wiki once I told her
that I had learned about them. At this
time they were newer and I thought they would be a unique way to do school
projects with my peers. However, life
became busy and I found it difficult to try to incorporate a new idea into our
already hectic student teaching schedules. Therefore, it wasn’t until this past
summer at West Georgia that I actually used a Wiki to collaborate with my
peers! I loved it. We were able to collaborate on a project,
yet, we all worked at our own pace. One
person was able to edit their portion, and then another person could come and
edit their portion and it was constantly growing. We used the home page as a discussion page
until we were ready to submit the final project, and then we changed it.
As I was reading the 7 Things You Should Know About Wikis article
I realized that for some teachers the idea that any person who visits the page
can edit will be mind blowing and a little scary. However, it must be known that Wikis are like
any other technology and they require practice and instruciton before we expect
the students to master them. Students
would need to be taught to make sure they do not delete another student’s work,
and they would need to be taught how to communicatie and collaborate with each
other. One of the things that I love the
most about a Wiki is the ability to collaborate outside of school, and on their
own time. Wikis, like any other
technology, have their flaws but the good outweighs the bad with this one and
the benefits are exciting to any teacher!
I loved the way that the
media specialist in Cobb County used the Wiki to save all of her documents and
put them on the internet for parents to use.
I feel like parents are always asking what books they should have for
their kids, or what their kids are interested in. This Wiki would be a perfect way to put
documents out there for parents to read over so they will know what their
children are doing and I coiuld even put suggested book lists for each
grade. I actually really appreciated her
documents about he News Team. I recently
started a live morning broadcast at my new school, and it was such a difficult
process to figure out as a first year media specialist. I pulled some of her documents and I plan on
saving them to use next year! I love that Wikis are available to every student
and can be beneficial to both student and teachers!
So glad you were able to pull information from the Cobb County wiki. You had a great experience with that project and I wish they all would run that smoothly. Great idea! Thanks for your post! I feel better about wiki's after reading your post because I had not gotten too much good feed back about wiki's.
ReplyDeleteMolly,
ReplyDeleteI’m glad you had a positive experience. During a previous class with Dr. Cooper, I learned how to use a Wiki, and after I got the hang of it, I really enjoyed using it. I planned to create a Wiki with my students, but since starting off the year with 36 kids, I have been treading water. Our class sizes have been reduced to 29, but I still don’t feel caught up enough to get started with my students. I agree with you about using a Wiki as a media specialist. I think it could be a great tool. When I completed my first blog on podcasts, I mention I would like to use some to post instructions for my students and parents, now I think using a Wiki for the kids and one for parents might work really well in my classroom. I can’t wait to work as a media specialist and be able to use these ideas.
Thanks for sharing,
Belinda
Molly, I agree with your notion of how wikis make great collaborative spaces that can be simultaneously edited at a user's own pace. I do agree that using wikispaces does require a bit of training but it has been my experience (especially within this course) that once you get the hang of it, it is fairly simple. That being said, I think you make a valid point that it can be a bit scary to relinquish control over a wiki and allow students or other teachers to modify content. However, there is also a part of me that feels this would be a great way for students to learn how to collaborate with technology and all of its perks and pitfalls. I love your idea of using a wiki to communicate with parents and students regarding recommended reading and media center activities. As schools are becoming more and more technology-driven, I think parents would be more apt to check out wiki resources online as it is convenient and easy to do on their own time.
ReplyDeleteMolly,
ReplyDeleteThank you for putting the idea for wiki for parent communication. I am going to find time in my schedule to begin a wiki for my parents. As a middle school teacher, I do not have many face-to-face interaction with my parents because they do not come to conferences, open house, or PTSO meeting, I have a website, but it is more geared towards my students than reaching and teaching my parents.
Yu mentioned using the wki for group collaboration. This is one way to collaboration, but I do not find the wiki to be any better than simply emailing the work to a peer. I have had an issue with someone deleting my work off of the wiki. I know it was unintentional, but I was still inconvenienced by this action.