Wikis in the Classroom

 As I have been taking my 802 Foundations of Educational Technology I have become more aware of social media tools and how they can be used in the classroom.  In particular I have been interested in using Wikis in the classroom.  I have started a few wikis but never finished them and I have yet to use them in the classroom.  After taking the 802 class I have been inspired to look further into using Wikis to enhance learning in my online classes.  In the 802 class we have been using our class Wiki as a place to summarize our weekly discussions where each week a different group is in charge of posting the summary.  There are also chapter summaries and resources that have been posted by the professor but the one thing that I use the most from the Wiki is for looking at other students work.  I can click on the Wiki and see the students work from previous years as well as from this year.  This helps me to know that I am on track and gives me inspiration for my work as well.

As I think about how I might use Wikis in my classroom I do need to be aware of which tools are going to save me time and which ones are going to be time consuming.  It is not that I mind putting in the time for tasks that will enhance learning but I find that many times, especially in online learning, there are many tasks that just eat up time by having to click and open documents or student's work pages.  I have already mentioned that in my previous posts that our school division uses Moodle to deliver their distance learning courses.  This leads me to wonder what the role is for using Moodle, Blogs, and Wikis in the classroom.  Are these tools redundant?


Moodle has a gradebook which is the main reason for using it.  If students are collaborating on Wiki I will still have to enter in a grade in Moodle.  I have to say that I have not done a lot of group work or collaboration in Moodle which seems to be the clear advantage to using Wikis, with their ability to allow students to share and collaborate so easily.  It would be a great place to put unit and topic summaries that the students could build and work on together.

So I suppose the way to use Moodle, Wikis, and Blogs would be in combination.  The Moodle server would be used as a more private and intimate setting for students to check their grades and to have more personal discussions in the discussion board where students can feel safe and know that their comments are not being made public for all to see.  Whereas the Wiki would be a great place to collaborate and share work among the class, and the Blogs could be used for individual work and achievement. 

Some things to consider when using Wikis in the classroom:

• Make sure that you sign up for the free K-12 wiki space as it is add free and will give you a few more options in the privacy settings where you can set the Wiki up so that only members can view and edit pages.
• Make sure that you have your privacy setting set up so that only the members of the site can edit and make changes.  You wouldn't want anyone anywhere to be able to make changes on your site.
• As always with social media, make sure the students are aware of how to be good digital citizens on the Wiki.  Here is a sample of a Student/Parent Blog/Wiki Contract

 I didn't want to post this Wiki review before I had fully finished a Wiki of my own, so here it is, my very first completed Wiki about the Importance of Hair from a First Nations Perspective.  I originally developed this for my Cosmetology 20 students and for my ETAD 879 class but the Wiki is much more than that as it explains how residential schools devastated First Nations people by making them cut their hair.  I hope you enjoy it!

 http://hair-importance.wikispaces.com/

Resources:

 I really loved this Venn diagram from Viki Davis:

 

Viki Davis talks about how she uses Wikis in the classroom.
50 ways to use Wikis in the classroom.