2+-+What+is+a+wiki?

A wiki is one type of Web 2.0 tool that can be used in education. Take some time to review the wiki __#|video__ and resources below. After you are done reviewing the resources you will need to follow the directions and post a comment at the bottom of this page.

So, are you wondering how educators are using wiki's? Look at the link below to see some ideas. [|50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom] Take some time to look though some of the other wiki resources that I have listed below. The wiki we are using ( www.wikispaces.com ) is not the only wiki site available FREE for educators. Another great wiki site that educators can use is [|www.pbworks.com].
 * 1) [|Defintion of a Wiki from Wikipedia]
 * 2) [|Teachers First Wiki Walk-Through]

‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍So, now that you have become familiar with what a wiki is and have some ideas how it can be used in the classroom, I want you to share your thoughts to the reflection questions below. To share your thoughts, you will be posting a comment at the bottom of this wiki page. Just type in your comment and click the "Add Comment" button. Reflection questions: ‍1. What ideas do you have for using wiki's in the classroom with students? If you are not a classroom teacher share how you would use a wiki in your position. 2. What safety concerns might there be when using this type of tool? 3. Are there any questions that you still have about this type of tool? ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Additional Resource - If you like wiki's and think this is something you would want to create and use in your classroom, but need some help then check out these great [|PBworks teacher training videos].

Phillip Weaver: While I don't see myself using a wiki in my current classroom of 3 year old's, I can see it being very beneficial in the future. I would like to use a wiki in a group project where each group is researching one side of a debate or argument. Each group would be assigned a position on the argument and would then be responsible for finding the strengths and weaknesses of their side. I would like for the students to decide what issue they want to investigate and possibly even come up with the issue on their own. The concern I have with this is making sure that the issue is one that can be investigates safely on the internet. Also, if I let the students completely think of the issue they want to investigate, I wont have much notice in setting up the wiki. I think the best medium would be to prepare a list of possible issue that the students are interested in and let them vote on the one they are most interested in. I think a good culminating experience to this would be a live, in-class debate or group discussion, to see how their views on the issue have changed or stayed the same. Another concern with any group project is that the work load is shared evenly within all members of the group. I believe this could be remedied by requiring all students to post/add content to the wiki. I'm sure I'll have more questions about wiki's once I get further into creating one.

Greg Edwards: I work with 7th and 8th graders, so wikis would be possible. We could use these pages as tools for our research papers, and also maybe when we work on responses to literature. Honestly, there are a lot of possibilities. As long as the wikis are private and I can always track who edits what, I don't see any major safety concerns. If the pages weren't personal, I would just make sure to follow my district's regular privacy policies. Overall, I see some great potential benefits for utilizing wikis. Wikis are definitely something I look forward to hopefully implementing more in the future.

Leslie Furdek:

I am currently working on my certification in special education so I am not a classroom teacher at this point in time. I can though use my experiences as a paraprofessional when it comes to deciding how to use this type of site in the special education classroom. I can create a class wiki for my students and add sections such as a calender and hall of fame. Our students start every class period with working on the calendar They have to identify the date, special days in the month, and answer a series of questions. By adding an online calender they can continue this work at home with their parents or guardians The hall of fame will be a great place to post pictures and words of praise for my students. They will love going home to share their successes with their parents. Thirdly, I can add a section for educational websites for the students to use at school and at home. By putting all the websites together in one area my students will be more likely to get to them in a easy and in an independent fashion. There are so many ways to use a Wiki in my classroom but I need to be sure to keep safety in my mind. Students having the ability to edit the website which means that inappropriate things can and probably will show up. Students who think they are just being funny may actually cross boundaries and offend people. Also, posting pictures of students on the Wiki could make some parents uncomfortable so I need to be sure to have all parents sign waivers for this to happen.

Brandi Walker:

I currently work as a kindergarten teacher in a very diverse culture in St. Louis. I think implementing a wiki in my class now would be a challenge, but it could be done. I love the idea of having virtual field trips and finding different places around the world to do this with. We struggle with finding affordable places to take our students, so possibilities could be endless when making it a virtual field trip and doing that from the classroom. I also like the ideo of having a virtual library where my students could go on and listen to books. I could post pictures of them or videos of them reading, counting, etc. My students loved to be recorded and then hear themselves. I also like that I could create a page of educational websites that my students could have access to at school or home. A few concerns I have with this are that I know several of my students do not have interent access at home, so many of my students would not be able to access this information. Some safety concerns I would have would be posting pictures or videoso of my students or school. There would have to be a lot of documentation signed in order for this to take place. I would have to really pay attention to my settings and what my students had access to. As far as questions go with wiki, I just struggle with navigating new websites. Once I mess around with them for awhile and get the hang of things, everything works out. It's just getting to that point, because I am a little bit of a perfectionist and I am learning to navigate so many different sites at the moment that it is hard to keep them all straight.

Dutch Knickmeyer Is anyone else horrified every time they do some editing? What if you mess someone else�s things up? I�m not currently a classroom teacher, but I can imagine many uses of wikis in a class. First off if a person is careful, Wikipedia can be a good source. It seems like alot of the sites that we have learned about or used in class are wikis. Sometimes I feel like the line of what is a wiki, compared to other Web 2.0 sites is grey. So besides the professional uses for wikis in a classroom it�s important have students use them. If you were having groups of students doing a project it would be very simple to use Prezi to give the directions, and then have them use the Create-A-Graph and the Text2MindMap sites while they are working together. I�m sure that everyone�s wikis have great uses in a classroom. My concerns about the safety of wikis isn�t that great. Yes there is always the chance of getting bad information, but that can happen anytime. There is the concern of students running to things online that they shouldn�t, but again could happen anytime. Students working in groups might not share the work load properly, but the same as mentioned above. Wikis just don�t seem to be that much different then many of the sites, and teaching techniques that we already use. I�m certainly not going to not use wikis out of the safety concerns.

Chelsey Olson In my current position as an ABA paraprofessional, I would not be able to effectively use wiki’s with my students. However, I would be open to using this tool in my future classrooms after experimenting with it some more. My first interactions with wiki’s did not fully catch my interest or spark any creative ideas for incorporating them into my future classroom. After reading about some of the many ways wiki’s can be used, I am much more open to embracing this web 2.0 site. Depending on the grade level I was teaching, I would most likely use wiki as a way for students or groups of students to share information that they have researched, much like we are doing on this wiki page. Instead of preparing a PowerPoint presentation and presenting it, students could create a wiki page for the whole class to see. They could even review what they included on their wiki to the class with the page projected in the classroom. I might also consider using wiki for student peer review of papers. This would allow students to suggest revisions for each other’s work while I would be able to supervise the comments given. One concern I have with the tool is the openness of the editing. I keep triple checking myself each time I log into to edit my wiki page so that I do not accidentally erase and add onto someone else’s page. Is there a way to control this? Likewise, how do you control who is the “leader” of the wiki page? While I am still experimenting with the layout, I feel that there are other similar web 2.0 tools that are more user-friendly and offer greater aesthetic design options. Overall, I am happy to have the opportunity to practice using this tool and will most likely incorporate it into my future classroom as a way for students to present and share their work.