In our highly connected culture, most people are familiar with Wikipedia and how it works. Due to the fact that anyone can post and edit a page, most people scoff at its validity since it is not written by experts. What most people don’t understand is the power of such: that people all over the world can contribute to the knowledge found there and that together people can build much more knowledge than someone can alone (Richardson, 2010). No matter where you stand on this issue, what you may not know is that Wikipedia is not the only one of its type. A wiki is merely a webpage where anyone can post and edit content at any time (Richardson, 2010). When you understand this, you can begin to understand the power of collaboration and learning that this tool could harness.
On my journey to explore wikis further, I found some incredibly interesting examples of how wikis are used for unique learning experiences in classrooms all over the world. The first one I encountered was Code Blue. Code Blue is a wiki in which students take on a medical persona and open their own virtual medical clinics. On the pages of their medical clinics, students have added links to content about particular systems of the human body, both written and visual. What I really liked about Code Blue is that the home page has content that the teacher has identified as useful for the students to give them a starting point. If I were working on this wiki, I probably would have also put a rubric or requirements link to give students guidance in case they had any questions throughout the process. The next wiki I viewed was Greetings from the World, a wiki in which students all over the world can post links to virtual posters called Glogs (see Glogster for more information on using this neat tool) that discuss their view of various locations throughout the room. What an authentic and connected learning experience! This wiki also has language options for students who do not speak English as their first language. The other interesting thing about this wiki is the map on the home page which identifies where different studies who have posted are at throughout the world. The last wiki I viewed was Schools in the Past. I chose this one in particular because it is so far from what I teach (high school science). This is a wiki done by first-grade students who were asked to interview older people about what schools were like when they were kids. The wiki is very straight forward and is separated by topic, playgrounds, for instance. I thought this wiki was a very interesting way to get students to incorporate technology into their learning objectives. The only thing I would have changed is have students record the year that this event took place and then have them place it on the wiki in the order that it occurred to add to the cross-curricular experience. Another thing I might have tried is opening the experience up to various community members to add their own experiences and have the students check the wiki to see what has been added.
As you can see, wikis can provide excellent learning experiences for students. I plan on beginning to use wikis in my own classroom. While there are so many opportunities to begin incredible projects, I will begin with creating a home wiki for my students and create group wikis for small project groups in each class. Students will use the wiki to collaborate while doing their research and will later post the link to their final projects on the home page. I like the idea of monitoring their collaboration so I can know who contributed what content to the project (Davis, 2007).
Blazik, Arjana. (2009, Oct). Greetings from the World. Retrieved from http://greetingsfromtheworld.wikispaces.com/About
Code Blue. Retrieved from http://codeblue.wikispaces.com/wiki/members?responseToken=a4dbcfbcc9f604ee5b250fa13494712f
Davis, Michelle. (2007, Sept 12). Wiki Wisdom: Lessons for Educators. Digital Directions. Retrieved from http://jdorman.wikispaces.com/file/view/Wiki+Wisdom+Article.pdf
Richardson, Will. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. California: Corwin.
Schools in the Past. Retrieved from http://schoolsthen.wikispaces.com/
On my journey to explore wikis further, I found some incredibly interesting examples of how wikis are used for unique learning experiences in classrooms all over the world. The first one I encountered was Code Blue. Code Blue is a wiki in which students take on a medical persona and open their own virtual medical clinics. On the pages of their medical clinics, students have added links to content about particular systems of the human body, both written and visual. What I really liked about Code Blue is that the home page has content that the teacher has identified as useful for the students to give them a starting point. If I were working on this wiki, I probably would have also put a rubric or requirements link to give students guidance in case they had any questions throughout the process. The next wiki I viewed was Greetings from the World, a wiki in which students all over the world can post links to virtual posters called Glogs (see Glogster for more information on using this neat tool) that discuss their view of various locations throughout the room. What an authentic and connected learning experience! This wiki also has language options for students who do not speak English as their first language. The other interesting thing about this wiki is the map on the home page which identifies where different studies who have posted are at throughout the world. The last wiki I viewed was Schools in the Past. I chose this one in particular because it is so far from what I teach (high school science). This is a wiki done by first-grade students who were asked to interview older people about what schools were like when they were kids. The wiki is very straight forward and is separated by topic, playgrounds, for instance. I thought this wiki was a very interesting way to get students to incorporate technology into their learning objectives. The only thing I would have changed is have students record the year that this event took place and then have them place it on the wiki in the order that it occurred to add to the cross-curricular experience. Another thing I might have tried is opening the experience up to various community members to add their own experiences and have the students check the wiki to see what has been added.
As you can see, wikis can provide excellent learning experiences for students. I plan on beginning to use wikis in my own classroom. While there are so many opportunities to begin incredible projects, I will begin with creating a home wiki for my students and create group wikis for small project groups in each class. Students will use the wiki to collaborate while doing their research and will later post the link to their final projects on the home page. I like the idea of monitoring their collaboration so I can know who contributed what content to the project (Davis, 2007).
Blazik, Arjana. (2009, Oct). Greetings from the World. Retrieved from http://greetingsfromtheworld.wikispaces.com/About
Code Blue. Retrieved from http://codeblue.wikispaces.com/wiki/members?responseToken=a4dbcfbcc9f604ee5b250fa13494712f
Davis, Michelle. (2007, Sept 12). Wiki Wisdom: Lessons for Educators. Digital Directions. Retrieved from http://jdorman.wikispaces.com/file/view/Wiki+Wisdom+Article.pdf
Richardson, Will. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. California: Corwin.
Schools in the Past. Retrieved from http://schoolsthen.wikispaces.com/