Summer08Wikis

"A **wiki** is [|software] that allows users to create, edit, and [|link] web pages easily. Wikis are often used to create [|collaborative] [|websites] and to power community websites."

I think wikis are cool!

Check these sites out:

[|MediaWiki]

[|PBWiki]

[|Scribe Post Hall of Fame]

[|Seed Wiki]

[|Wiki Search Engine]

I have a wiki page! I have absolutely no time to play on it and learn its capabilities. I developed the page at a wonderful in-service through the the Berks County Intermediate Unit. Jamie Kasper, the Arts and Humanities Director of PDE, went step by step on how to create a wiki. I have art links and resources on it. I have not updated it since the Fall. I do believe my middle school students are ready for me to integrate this technology into my curriculum. However, what does this mean to me, my school? How can I incorporate yet another "thing" to maintain? I have a school web page, a wiki space, On-line newsletters, and galleries. I do want to be spending more screen time--I am a hands-on teacher/learner. ~Ronda Lee Seymour http://www.movingimage.us/aec/

Please feel free to tell about your experiences with wikis and add any links (To add a link, click on the World with the link icon and put your link text in the box that comes up.) you feel appropriate. As you add your comments (just click on Edit This Page at the top), I can click on recent changes and see who made them. You can also do this. My comments are in Green - Thanks, Barb

I was first introduced to wikis last summer during an inservice. Our district has an intranet through Share Point. I am currently a co-op coordinator and business teacher at my high school. In the beginning of the year, I developed a wiki for my Business Law class. Every week I assigned a different student to add to the wiki the assignments that were covered during the week. That way, if a student was absent, they just needed to access the wiki to find out what they missed. The unfortunate part of creating a wiki on our school's intranet, is that you had to be at school to access, the student's could not access it from home. So this summer I am creating a wiki through wikispaces for my co-op students. It is very hard to keep in touch with your students over the summer, so I want them to be able to contact me to let me know if they have a job for next school year, etc. I will also be able to post any available jobs for those students seeking one. I think that this will work out for me and my students in regards to the co-op program. --Julie Cerasoli

It wasn't until recently that I learned about wikis. During a discussion with one of the directors of technology in our district, he had mentioned that our district was looking into investing in new forms of technology such as web 2.0, wikis, podcasting, etc. After investigating some of the sites, I really focused on ideas to implement wikis as a collaborative educational tool. I think they are an excellent means of engaging students in meaningful discussions and constructing written works. I think using wikis in math to pose problem solving or critical thinking questions is a great way for students to apply their knowledge in a supportive and collaborative environment. Wikis enable teachers to implement the constructivist theories of learning. They allow students to take an active role in their learning and teachers to faciliate the learning process. Our students are already programmed to communicate and interact via texting, emailing, instant messaging, etc. Why not use this style of learning to increase student engagement? The meshing of ideas, creating and recreating in a collaborative environment is such an important and relevant skill for students. I'd really like to use this technology in my classroom. Like many other forms of technology, the more I learn about them the more I want to use them in the classroom. If the use of wikis is taught to students and monitored by teachers, I think they are a great tool to increase student engagement and motivation.

Our faculty was introduced to wiki's at the end of last year during an in-service day and I was amazed at how well they can be used to work on projects together. That fact that everyone has access and the ability to edit information has great benefits. Since that workshop, I have only been invited to join a wiki twice and have not implemented them in my classroom. When I do implement wiki's in my classroom, I will create a wiki and have students search for information on Algebra and put that information on the wiki. I will also ask them to include links to Algebra web sites and tutorials.

I think wiki’s are cool as well! I was first introduced to them last summer while attending a National Endowment for the Humanities summer grant program at the F.D.R. Library. A fellow attendee put together a wiki site for all of us to utilize. She complied lesson plan ideas, resources, cool sites etc. What was really amazing was being able to talk to fellow attendees throughout the school year! We shared ideas and resources as we came across them. It has been great to share that level of collegiality with them.

Unfortunately I have not begun to implement them in my own classroom yet. We are in the dark ages as far as access to technology where I work. We are working to increase our funding. We will then have the use of more computers to walk my students though the usefulness of sites like these. -Ellen

I'm with everyone else - never heard of a wiki and have never used one before. It was not hard to work in, and it seems like a giant blog. I visited some of the sites and found them interesting, but like every site out on the web, it takes a lot of time to search and find what you are looking for. I like keeping up with the technology, so I asked several of my classes if they heard of a wiki and if they've used it. I got a mixed reaction. I see it as a resouce for my classroom and a possible (safe) site for sharing ideas. Thank you for this interesting topic - I feel like I've got to get out more! ~Ruth Guenther

Ok, so I feel really silly. Like many in this class, I've had very little exposure to wiki's. To be honest, I thought "Wikipedia" was the only wiki and I had a negative view of wiki's before navigating through some of the links listed on this page. The reason for this negative stance, was I had heard a couple of kids in colleague's class had actually written themselves into a battle in the Civil War and cited it in a research paper.

I really like the [|PBWiki] site and think it is a great resource to share ideas for a class in a safe fashion. I still am nowhere near comfortable with wiki's but, "Rome wasn't built in a day". I think there were some other math teachers in the group so I'll list this link:

[|MathWiki]

Thanks for the opportunity to get immersed in the 21st century. -Phil Matilla

Wikis are new to me, as well. I haven't heard of them before this unit. I did explore the informational website about Wikis and found it interesting to be able to provide students with focused websites that can pertain to a unit of study. I also like the collaboration component that it provides. I learned in my brain based learning class that collaboration is crucial for long term learning. I do think it would be challenging to teach students how to use wikispace. However, this could be taught with the computer curriculum and then used in content area classes. I have created and used webquests to keep learners focused on purposefully selected websites rather than have them surf the web for information. It is another way to keep students focused, safe, and on track. As for collaboration, we worked through the webquests in cooperative learning groups.

I am a visual learner, so looking at the following website helped me to understand wikis more clearly, as it provides examples. http://writingwiki.org/default.aspx/WritingWiki/ForTeachersNewtoWikis.html - Suzann Engle

I have never been on this site before, nor have I heard of it. I agree with Chris that it is a little hard to navigate, and being as I teach first and second graders, I think this may be too difficult for them. I do like the fact that it is a safe area for students to get classroom information from. I think this would be a great resource for older students.-Susan Donchez

Like most of you, I have never heard of wikis until now. I feel this would be a great tool to use in a classroom and throughout a district. This would be an easy way to allow students to hear what people from other schools have to say about a topic. Although I feel that this would be a great tool, I am not sure that my district would allow something like this. It seems to me that they are very conservative as far as what they allow students to do on the computers. I feel like they would consider this too much of a blog and not allow it. I am interested in learning more about wikis and seeing what I can do though to incorporate technology such as this into my classroom.

It sounds like wikis are a great topic for this course, since many of us are not familiar with them. I was not aware of wikis until I checked out some of the sites. It seems like a great tool! However, as a kindergarten teacher, I am not sure that I could use them in my classroom. Kindergarten typing skills are very limited. Older students could definitely share some interesting comments on a variety of topics, but I think it would be very important for teachers to monitor comments carefully. I do think it would be a great way for our faculty to communicate with each other. E-mail does not have the same capabilities! I will be interested to see if this tool comes up in our summer meetings as a new part of our district curriculum. For those of you who find a lot of information too hard to navigate through, I found a certain section of the Wikipedia page helpful. [|This is helpful for editing wikis.] Jen Kovalchick

I hate to continue to say the same thing as all the others, but to be honest, I have never even heard of a wiki before this class. Like everyone else has mentioned I have looked at the wikipedia site, but did not put much thought into how and what it was used for. I just knew it was not a reliable researching source because it can be edited by anyone. I think after learning a little bit more about this and exploring the different wiki sites it will definitely be a tool I would like to use in my classroom in the future. I think it would be a valuable tool to have students post responses. I am going to look into all of the uses and hopefully implement this in same way next year. Ben Childs

 This is my first time experiencing and participating on a wikispace. I have heard about it from a colleague who used it with their 5th grade students. They shared at a professional development day how wiki's can be used to allowed students to share and collaborate information in a safe place. I am sure that this is something that can be worked into my curriculum and I am hoping to learn more about it as we go. I am not sure my third graders would be able to easily navigate and explore the site however, with a little practice I think we could find many uses for this. As I was exploring also looking for sites for third graders or lower elementary students. I think the idea of using it for literature discussions is a great idea. Read a book as a class and have students post one question and answer a question seems like it would work. I am going to keep exploring. ~Hillary Hunter

I have never used wikis before. My school was just introduced to it last Friday at an in-service. Yes, we are a little behind when it comes to technology. I found some of the websites to very helpful. I thought MediaWiki and PBWiki had a lot of information for first time users. They showed you how to navigate through and how to edit a page. PBWiki gave several examples on how to incorporate wikis into your classroom, which is great for starters. I do feel that wikis is a little above the primary elementary grades, but if anyone has suggestions that would be great. The intermediate grades and above could really benefit from wikis being incorporated into their classroom. -Janna Elston  I have heard of wikis before but have no experience with them. I am very interested to learn more. I want to get my students involved and hope to be able to implement this into my curriculum for next year. We had a 6th grade teacher that retired last year and is very into the wikis. I will probably be picking his brain over the summer if I get stuck. I would like to use it to discuss math problems and how to solve them in different ways. I do feel that students will need a lot of guidance with the "chat" format. Keeping them on contact is a major concern! Thanks so much for providing me the sites to explore this feature of the internet more! ~Linda Hixson

I had heard of the term wiki before, but never knew what it was. The youtube video [|Wiki in Plain English] helped me to understand the concept of wikis better. I think they would a little too complex for my students, but I think they would be great to use to collaborate with the rest of my team. We're encouraged by our admin to share lesson plans, online resources, worksheets that we make, etc. A wiki would be a great way to organize all everything into one central location. I like the idea that we could make changes to something that a co-worker makes immediately. I may introduce the idea to my grade level team and see if they would be receptive to it for next year. - Joanna Tiedeken Demchak

I loved the Wikispaces! It is a tech resource that is very unfamiliar to me but I would like to learn more. I like that it is a secure place for students to get information. I would be a great resource for upper grade to post directions to projects, etc. I do wonder how I could incorporate it into a 1st grade classroom. Thanks for the introduction to Wikispaces. Heather McGlaughlin

I was first introduced to wikis last summer during an inservice. Our district has an intranet through Share Point. I am currently a co-op coordinator and business teacher at my high school. In the beginning of the year, I developed a wiki for my Business Law class. Every week I assigned a different student to add to the wiki the assignments that were covered during the week. That way, if a student was absent, they just needed to access the wiki to find out what they missed. The unfortunate part of creating a wiki on our school's intranet, is that you had to be at school to access, the student's could not access it from home. So this summer I am creating a wiki through wikispaces for my co-op students. It is very hard to keep in touch with your students over the summer, so I want them to be able to contact me to let me know if they have a job for next school year, etc. I will also be able to post any available jobs for those students seeking one. I think that this will work out for me and my students in regards to the co-op program. --Julie Cerasoli

I also had no experience with wikis. I did wonder if it had a connection to wikipedia. My first year teaching I thought wikipedia was great. While doing research papers I would be surprised about how much information my students can access from wikipedia on all the random topics they would choose for their papers. It also gave them the MLA citation which helped and saved me some time. Then someone told me that it wasn't a reliable source of information because anyone could post their thoughts. Now I do not allow my students to use it as a source for their papers. Do you think it is ok to have them use Wikipedia?

I had never heard of wiki, but i had used different types of discussions boards before in other classes and i had known teachers who had their own websites and their students were able to access it and utilize it for assignments and for discussions. I think this is a great tool and it is something that i am thinking of implementing in my own classes. When i student taught, each teacher had a website where they could easily contact and we posted numerous assignments, upload exams, etc. Next year, our classerooms will all have computers and internet access and i would like to at some point post all assignments, worksheets, exams, and also be able to have discussions. Is wiki capable of doing all of those things, almost like the blackboard we use for wilkes? or would another type of software be required? - Curtis Waltman

This is the first time that I have ever heard of a wiki. Without any prior knowlege, I had adifficult time manuevering my way around the sites. I am looking forward to becoming more familiar with this technology and finding different ways to incorporate it into my first grade classroom. Mary Beth Miko

**I am about to say what so many have already said. My first reaction to this was, "What is a wiki?" I have never heard of a wiki before and did not know what wikispaces were. I am excited to find out and hopefuly be able to use them in my classroom in the future. I currently do not have computers in my classroom for student use and it is extremely difficult for me to incorporate technology in my lessons. Hopefully I will be able to figure out new ways to incorporate this material. It seems like fun! ~Tracey Mitchell**

created a wiki this summer for all of my classes. I use it to post any notes that I give and any powerpoints as well. The students that are absent can check my wiki for any worksheets that I handed out. I also use it to put important information about final exams and midterms or field trips. I also included a voki on my wiki. It's kind of creepy, but I like it. If you want to check out my wiki, it is gpowers.wikispaces.com. Enjoy :)