Practical and Pedagogical Applications of Wikis in the Classroom
(Wikis that Work on slideshare.net)
Common Craft and 'Wikis in Plain English'
Some common questions and issues
- Wikipedia: reliability and authenticity of information questioned, however it can be a great resource for students to research and an authentic project that students can contribute to
- Wikipedia School and Universities projects
- The 'fake professor' controversy
- Students assessed with wikipedia
- Andy Carvin's Learning.now: When is an expert not an expert?
- Wikipedia Schools/Teachers' Guide
- Essential features of a wiki: web pages, discussion tabs, history trail, management and control
- Different management levels to suit user needs
- Potentially, anyone can contribute, edit and delete
- List and print pages
- Explore the history of each page and 'revert' back to a previous version
- Use of discussion/comments tabs
- Embed multimedia: audio, video, images, RSS
The Anatomy of a Wiki video (embedded here) uses the Flat Classroom Project 2007 wiki to show how a wiki is used for interaction and collaboration by 7 classrooms and many othere educators from around the world.
(a definition of disruptive technologies: innovations that drastically change the course by which users connect, engage, and relate with the world and transform society)
- WikiHow: The 'How to' manual that anyone can write and edit
- Amopedia: A community for sharing information about the products you like most
- Citizendium: The general public and experts collaborate, using their real names. A new knowledge society.
Essential features of a Wiki-centric classroom
- Collaborative: shared experiences
- Engaging and supports social learning
- Opportunities for publication: teacher and student
- Opportunities for interaction
- Ability to use Web 2.0 tools
- Online learning, 24/7
- Fosters development of information literacy skills
Best practice use of wikis to support curriculum objectives
- ITGS wiki
- Course content development and syllabus outlines and timetable
- Online assignments and projects
- Provides for student-student and student-teacher interaction
- Assessment, presentation
- North Shore Reflections (Vinnie Vrotny)
- Westwood Schools wiki (Vicki Davis)
Some other uses of wikis
Teacher professional collaboration wiki
ISTE: SIGHC Wiki
Mont'Kiara International School Technology Integration curriculum planning wiki
K12 Online Conference (October/November 2006)
Professional Learning Environment / Digital Portfolio
Other presentation wikis:
A selection of best-practice use
- Warlick's CoLearners Wiki (David Warlick)
- Improving instruction through the use of weblogs (Anne Davis)
- Podcasting and All That Jazz
- Cyberbullying
- Information Fluency (Joyce Valenza)
- The Connected Classroom
- More examples
Resources
- Wikis in Education (portal)
- Cool Cat Teacher: How I Use Wikis and Wiki Collaboration Across the Curriculum
- 7 Things You Should Know about Wikis (from EduCause)
- Julie Lindsay's Delicious tags for 'Wiki best practice'
- MediaShift: Your guide to wikis
- Are wiki's worth the time? from Dec/Jan 0506 Learning and Leading Magazine
- Wikipedia Schools/Teachers' Guide
- Project Topics
- Project Resources
- In the News
- Winning student page on Virtual Communication
- Main features of student output:
- Personal video embedded on the wiki page
- Collaborative information using text and other multimedia
- Evidence of collaboration via discussion tab
- International Edublog Awards winner 2006 for Best Wiki
Web 2.0 tools used with the wiki to support online collaboration
- Audio recording, podcasting and wiki page embedding (e.g. Evoca)
- Video hosting and and embedding (e.g. YouTube and Google Videos)
- Communication tools (e.g. Skype, IM)
- Social networking: Ning
Other best practice examples of wiki-centric projects
- 1001 Flat World Tales (Clay Burell) and MS 1001 Flat World Tales (Kim Cofino)
- International Teen Life
- Expert Voices (Darren Kuropatwa)
- A Million Penguins
- Voices of the World (Sharon Tonner)
- Life 'Round Here (Chris Craft)
Video: How to embed a video onto a wiki page
This video was created for the Flat Classroom project and shows how to embed a Google video onto a wikispaces wiki. The same principle applies to other video hosting websites and alternative wiki sites.
Julie Lindsay, Last updated November 23, 2007