Wikis In the Classroom

Hi all,

It has taken me a while to post a blog about wikis, however I didn't start one until just recently because I didn't have the faintest idea of what to base my wiki on. On my prac, my class is currently doing a unit on insects and I thought this would be a great topic to start my wiki on! Personally I think wikis are a great asset to the classroom and are so versatile in their uses. When I thought about it, wikis could be used by students to exhibit/demonstrate their own learning and be used as part of an assessment piece. On the other hand, I think that wikis could be a really good way of teachers displaying their units and associated resources amongst their peers. Another way a wiki could be used, is of a sort of interactive learning journey, much like a webquest. Students could log on daily and complete designated activities within the wiki as directed by the teacher. This would make the lesson more student-centric rather than teacher-directed.

Another advantage of wikis is that they are compatible with so many other ICT programs such as slideshare, Flikr, Youtube, etc.

At the moment my personal wiki is in its early developmental stages, but I am thinking of approaching my mentor teacher and asking if I can introduce wikis to the students and also maybe post their descriptive paragraphs about a particular insects, which are past of the assessment for this unit and make them available for others to see. This idea would have te students more receptive to their assessment task as they will be using ICTs to complete the task rather than have to write it. This will add novelty to the assessment piece and hopefully produce higher standards of work from the students. On that point, I would like to comment on an observation I have made whilst on prac in that the students who are least receptive in the traditional classroom setting are more likely to thrive in learning activities based around ICTS. Some students in my class are very reluctant to pick up a pencil and write but when in the confines of a computer lab, it is amazing to see the change in their attitude and how well they perform in learning tasks.

Oh yeah, by the way here is the link to my wiki. Watch this space to see how it ends up in a couple of weeks time:

http://jondonald1984.wikispaces.com/

Please feel free to comment.

Regards

Jon :)