Thing #8

From reading about Vicki’s first experience (http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2005/12/wiki-wiki-teaching-art-of-using-wiki.html) with utilizing wiki’s with her students, I think this is a great idea and can be very useful. However, it needs to be used with the right age group and the teacher needs to have a firm grasp on how to use wiki’s before trying to teach the students. The extent that she used this with her students would not work with my first graders.

In this wiki (http://www.ahistoryteacher.com/~ahistory/apwhreview/index.php?title=Holocaust_Wiki_Project) I noticed it is almost identical to the format of wikipedia.com including the tables and image location on the site. What I would change is have it more user-friendly where all the information was one or two clicks away instead of 3 or more clicks away. In Jennifer’s wiki (http://jdorman.wikispaces.com/#toc1) I found it did not look like what I would consider a wiki. It was difficult to navigate and figure out what was a wiki and what was something else. I would have a website and then separate links for my blog, wiki, calendar, etc. in order to make it easier to navigate. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to subscribe to her page to access the wiki or not. I found this wiki interesting for use in younger grades (http://schoolsthen.wikispaces.com/). However, the information is not edited by the students so it differs than many other student produced wikis. The good thing about this site is it allows students to become familiar with the process of wikis and learn something along with it that involves the school community (parents, friends, grandparents, etc.). I would try to incorporate student input by having students write a comparison post in contrast to one put up by an adult to show the difference between school then and now.

I would like to try using wiki’s with my first grade students and this site (http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/wikiideas1.cfm) had a few good ideas of what type of wiki to start out with. Some ideas that I might try from this site are making a “virtual tour of [our] school as [we ]study “our community” in elementary grades or creating a “wiki ‘fan club’ for your favorite author(s).”