My feelings about using a wiki are mixed. I spent a lot of time last year working on my school website and know that, to make it good, I invested tons of time. I just hope that managing a wiki doesn't become the same way. I imagine that, since a wiki is collaborative, that the workload should not be nearly the same as a web page. I can also see that my webpage is mainly informative in nature although there is a blog feature (issue? students have to remember a their student number to log in and some are long...very difficult for third graders!). We can also post pictures and comment on them in a discussion board. But, the website does not offer my students the flexibility and collaborative nature of a wiki. I don't see the wiki replacing the website at all but being another tool that we use to learn together. I just can't afford too much more time off my plate to manage another thing so it will have to have a very practical use.
http://spohngrade3.wikispaces.com/
A wiki is definitely different than a blog. A blog allows people to post and comment but not to create, edit, and revise content together. A blog is a collaborative way of working but not the same as a wiki. A wiki can allow a teachers, his/her students, and people outside of the classroom to collaborate on projects of all kinds and add content from their own areas of expertise. I think a blog is appropriate to use if you'd like to have a class discussion in which you want to see exactly what each person can and will contribute on their own. Blogs also give the "owner" much more control about what ends up being allowed to be posted. A wiki hands over much of the control to each of its members. While creating this wiki, I found that my own school site had added a wiki feature to each teacher. If it works where I can have other classes collaborate (and not just the students within my room), I may try to use that instead of the wikispace because it is linked directly from my site and is set up with my students as users already.
One question: Do students have to have email addresses in order to become members of a wiki on wikispaces? If so, that could be difficult for the younger ones as far as parent permission goes.
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See my response in Thing 21 for an example of one way to start with a wiki.
ReplyDeleteAlso, students can have their own blogs through David Warlick's Class Blogmeister. Lisa Overton at Michener School in Adrian has been using this tool the past year - she would be a good contact to find out more about how these work and whether they're worth the effort to setup for students to have their own blog space.