Wikis!
Until now, I never knew what I was missing!
I have use a wiki one time in my teaching career but never
realized until now what a flexible, powerful, and easy to use tool wikis are. Two
years ago, the media specialist at my high school set up a wiki for me to
facilitate a student research project. It was basically a pathfinder, and it
contained one-stop-shop for students to access links to pertinent websites and
databases. It was cute – looked like a notebook. It was – and still is – linked
to the media center website and students can still access it. So can you if you
want to see one relatively uninspired application of the wiki tool:
That was my introduction to the wiki – and no one told me
that it could do so much more than just host a static Research Guide.
What exactly is
a wiki and how do you make one?
A wiki is a website that allows group members to collaborate
in various ways. It is easy to use – for teachers and kids…it has two buttons –
Edit and Save. Group members can link it to other wiki pages or other websites
and insert multimedia (student creations like pictures, video clips, and digital
stories). As the administrator of a group, the teacher or librarian can monitor
which group members contribute what ideas (and how groups members conduct themselves) and can track how they edit and contribute to a
collaborative project.
Creating
a Wikispace is free, and you make one by following the directions at
Wikispaces.com or
pbworks.com. There is a Wikispaces for Teachers (ad free) and a
Wikispaces Classroom,
a
n instructional tool (also free of charge) which I will
describe below. In addition to group collaboration, this Wikispaces
Classroom
adds features that allow for organizing instruction –
including the ability to monitor progress and give feedback and help as well as
social interaction between students (in a private, safe space).
What can you do with wikis?
You can use a wiki to do
anything involving any group of people – whether it be groups of students, the
faculty and staff, the student body as a whole, or the larger school community.
Teachers can set up collaborative learning projects for students; school
librarians can set up information hubs for various school and community groups.
Click on the link to see
some examples of how education professionals have set up and used educational
wikis. This website is so useful that you’ll probably end up bookmarking it on
your computer: Educational Wikis
Wikispaces Classroom is
set up specifically for teachers, and it is really awesome. It makes
project-based learning easy because it lets the teacher create projects and
organize students into groups to work together. It allows students to share
their work – not only with each other but with parents as well. It also has a
project tracking feature so the teacher can keep tabs on how everyone is doing.
This website also offers a way for class members to communicate outside of
school – and for the teacher to control who’s in the group and to monitor
discussions.
As an educator, why should you care about using wikis for
collaborative learning?
Wikis have all of the benefits of collaborative learning,
such as cooperation between peers, active learning, and differentiation of
learning activities. They extend these benefits by allowing access outside of
the typical hour-long class period, and because they keep a record of edits,
they let the teacher see how the work progressed and who contributed what
ideas. Even better, Wikis take collaborative learning to the next level by
making it easy for kids to create and share digital products and to evaluate
and give feedback to other group members. In other words, wikis promote student
cognitive engagement on the higher end of Bloom’s taxonomy. That’s what we
want.
As a media specialist, what can you do with wikis in your school
library media program?
Joyce Valenza is a high school teacher-librarian and blogger
for the School Library Journal who I have enjoyed reading. (Her blog is called
The NeverEnding Search!) She is an enthusiastic fan of wikis and has had a lot
to say about them over the years.
·
In her October 19, 2007 posting “More ‘things’:
Next steps along the 2.0 journey, she talked about how we as school librarians need
to move past introducing teachers to 2.0 tools and into how we (along with classroom
teachers) can apply those tools to engage students in learning, especially in
digital literacy things “informational fluency.”
·
Her June 27, 2007 blog posting “You know you are
a 21st century teacher librarian if you …” she describes wikis as a
way to “pull together resources to meet the information needs of your learning
community.” This includes “collaborative wiki pathfinders to support learning
and research in all learning arenas.”
·
Valenza promotes wikis as the perfect pathfinder
format for teaching digital literacy. In her blog posting June 20, 2007 “Ten reasons
why your next pathfinder should be a wiki,” she points out that because they
are so easy to use, wiki pathfinders allow students to be more independent as
they work on projects. They can include both links to everything a student
researcher needs plus your advice, suggestions and general guidance.
·
But for me, her reasons that include how easy
the wiki is to use are the best ones. It is easy to link to any electronic
resource you have and to upload documents. You can access it from anywhere, so
if you have a brainstorm in the middle of the night you can get up and edit the
wiki. Furthermore, you can collaborate with teachers in creating and editing pathfinders.
Finally, the pathfinder “might just be another opportunity to showcase the work
of the critical efforts of teacher-librarian in the 2.0 educational landscape!”
What is the most
awesome and practical wiki information I found?
It’s called
Elementary Library Routines and it is a wiki ‘platform’
specifically used by school librarians to organize information about the school library media
program. I am certain it could be adapted to use in middle and high schools as well. It is a library webpage with links for procedural
things that students need to know (like bathroom procedures, book care,
reserving books, checking out books, and using computers), things that teachers
need to know (like how AV equipment is managed, how to schedule time in the library,
and what special events and programs are available), and instructional support
for the curriculum.
What are potential drawbacks in using wikis?
A wiki
is as engaging, dynamic, and useful as its creator makes it. It can be like the
uninspired wiki I link to at the top of this post; it can be as amazing as
Disney World. Well, let’s make it Epcot. As school librarians, we can make sure
the wikis we create fall in the dynamic, amazing category; we can also help
teachers learn how to make their instructional wikis engaging for kids. There
actually are rubrics for evaluating wikis – which can be used to assess
student-created ones or to help teachers evaluate their own. The general
criteria include how engaging the content is (images, videos, slide shows); the
accuracy and currency of links to valid outside websites; and the appearance,
organization, and ease of navigation.
Potential Drawbacks of Wikis:
·
Initially
time consuming to set up
·
Easy
for editors to drastically change the content – even delete the whole thing
intentionally or accidentally
·
Overwhelming
to grade
·
Has
to be carefully monitored lest it turn into a confusing mess
·
It
is a feast for the lazy and unmotivated – because if they have access to
everyone else’s work they can be derivative or just coast along on the efforts
of others.
·
Web
based – if the internet goes out, you don’t have access
·
Plagiarism
and copyright issues
·
Kids
easily distracted by the proximity of the WWW and their social media
Why is it worth it to figure out how to address potential
drawbacks?
1) Wikis are a good fit for the way kids organize their lives
nowadays – engagement with technology and ability to persist in learning new
technology; online social interaction with their friends and classmates.
2) They are a good fit with the ‘newer models of learning’
in which the teacher becomes a facilitator and guide, and the students engage
in more authentic and collaborative learning activities.
So, what do you
think?
·
Have you used wikis before? If so, how?
·
If not, are you inspired to check out wikis as
an instructional collaboration tool?
·
Do you think they are a good fit with the school
library media program? How have you seen them used?
·
What drawbacks have you encountered, or do you
anticipate?
·
How would you ‘fix’ the drawbacks?
·
Dr. Cooper’s question: While Wikis are touted as
collaborative tools, many seem to be passive "storage cabinets." What
elements need to be present to move them toward being active spaces for
collaboration?
