Tuesday, February 14, 2012
To Wiki or Not
Our county has provided us with a teacher website template. Several years ago each teacher was "strongly encouraged" to set up their website. I am about the only one who still uses the website with my students. More recently, we have attended various workshops to set up wikis. As time has passed, I prefer using the webite over the wiki. After reading Richardson's Chapter 4, I now have more of a renewed interest in trying to incorporate the wiki in my instruction again. The title of the chapter, "Wikis: Easy Collaboration for All", is a bit deceiving. Does anyone already have a wiki that they use with their students in class? It seems like a wiki can be very much like the blogs that we have all set up. Is it worth it to set one up? I want to incorporate technology into my classroom but want to be able to focus on one piece and do that one piece well enough that it truly benefits my students. Any suggestions?
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Trish,
ReplyDeleteI do not currently use wikis and I currently use Edline as a blog - only for classroom management. Edline is required by all teachers in my district and if you do not keep up on it you will be "reminded" of your duties. I post homework assignments, news, due dates, important links, and students can have an up to date look at the grades. You are right, blogs and wikis have similar uses. I find I lean more towards blogs because they seem better for discussion of open ended questions. I am not sure how other people feel about that. I feel I am going to focus using blogs more in my class because as you said there is so much technology that can be used, too much to use all successfully if you are new to it. I suggest you play around with both on your own and see which one you prefer and go with that.
One thing that I've thought about using wikis for that I don't think you could do with blogs is peer editing. Wikis allow several users to edit documents and tracks those changes. I haven't set one up yet, but this seems like a great way to peer edit. Students could post their work and have a peer edit it, and I could track the changes made to make sure that everything was appropriate.
ReplyDeleteAllen,
DeleteI love that idea of peer editing. I did not think about that when I was comparing blogs and wikis.