Thing 9 - Wiki

Well I think Wikis can be very useful, however there are pro and cons to them. The biggest thing that sticks out in my mind is the fact that anyone can edit them. This can be scary, especially in an educational setting. You don't want students learning the wrong thing. However, this does present an opportunity to teach students how to evaluate material that they find on the web and to teach about web etiquette. I liked the wiki that was designed by Vicki Davis "Cool Cat Teacher." It was simply and had many links to resources. Some of the tools however were empty or I couldn't get them to work. This would be a nice way to share info or collaborate with staff members on cross-curriculum project or with other school districts even.

One of the other sites I took a look at was the Pbwiki classroom. I liked this wiki because everyone could modify text and the page, but there was still control by the instructor. You could see who posted what and restore back to original text. I guess I'm a little bit of a control freak and could see some students messing around. I think this would be better in the educational setting that I work in.

The third wiki I focused on was wikipedia. I have used wikipedia for some info in my classes. It is nice to be able to have info at the tip of your fingers. You can find almost anything at wikipedia. In the one article it talked about how people can abuse the system but the community members tend to fix the errors that people put in. They mention that it is an example of "self-organizing group behavior in action" I only bring up this because it seems at times that we live in a society that doesn't look out for the common good of the people. We have turned into a "ME" society. In matter of fact I have a current 8th grader that in his free time loves to go on wikipedia and modify things to be false. When you have students that get a kick out of doing that, how do you implement wikis without some type of filter/control system in place.

I do think it would be cool to set up wikis for the different project that I do in my class and even some presentations that I have students do. I think for my next assignment for thing 10, I am going to make my wiki at the Pbwikiclassroom. The reason being is for the control of editing. Middle schoolers will be middle schoolers, if you know what I mean!!