The idea behind wikis is awesome and looks like it has great potential. I visited everyone of the wiki sites listed. Some had very interesting ideas for using a wiki: Student book reviews, student collaboration, documenting library procedures, literary circles and much more. Last spring our Junior High Librarian set up a wiki space for the LEISD Librarians (http://leisdlibrary.wikispaces.com/). She created it where she was the Content Manager and although we can all add anything to it we want, we can’t change what she added. I went in and added a discussion page. No one else ever looked at it. So it has been stagnant after one week of conception. Doesn’t say much for us but maybe we can get a clear focus in mind and get it going once school starts. As I looked over all the links, it became predominantly clear that almost all of them have been at least a year since they have been updated and some longer than that. I can’t decide for sure if it is because most were set up for one specific task in mind and then when it was finished, so was the wiki or if they all chose another route to collaborate. The link for The Literary Circle showed that the wiki had not been updated since Nov. 2007 but there was a link to Mr. Miller’s classroom blog and sure enough the activity is still continuing just not in a wiki. In Web 2.0 where everything is always being updated or replaced, I’m wondering if the wiki is losing its standing and being replaced. Why was every example except the Spring Branch sandbox not being kept up with? Just makes me wonder.
Wikis are a great way to stay green when collaborating with others and it keeps your email from getting all jammed. So, in that sense, I think they are a great idea and hopefully, I can create one for my school with a few projects I have in mind and see if I can keep mine current. Some ideas I have are to keep minutes and discussions of our Librarian monthly district meetings there so we can all collaborate on items we are trying to focus on.…budget, library procedures, new books and lesson plan ideas. For students, I am thinking about a Book Club wiki, research on Texas Indians, Famous Texans, Texas Missions. I think I’ll start with 4th graders and if that works well, I’ll create something for the other grades. I am also thinking a wiki might be a good place to have teachers request collaborative lessons and we could do our brainstorming there to get it set up to go.
Excellent ideas for student Wikis. It has always stumped me how to organize information from all the students at once. With a Wiki they could each have input about the thing (historical figure, event, place, etc) they researched or the book they love. Thanks for the ideas.
ReplyDeleteI think Wikis probably exist for a specific project and that's why they are not updated, but it is a valid question.