Use of wikipage in classroom

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Permalink Reply by Mark Fuson on October 3, 2008 at 6:22am

Wikis are great for group projects for students. A wiki allows multiple people to work on the same project at the same time, even if they are separated by a great distance. For me, the best feature of a wiki is that I can see what changes are being made to a wiki and who is making them. This alleviates the old problem of a single student getting stuck doing all the work.

In the past, my students have used wikis to create a project I call "MyBigFatGreekGodSpace". It is a play off of the popular myspace pages, where students research the Greek gods and heroes and then create a myspace-style page for them. The kids love it as the myths are quite interesting, and the pages turn out great, with "posts" from other Greek gods who "drop by" the page and so forth. The kids have fun, and they know a great deal more about mythology when they are done than the other freshman teacher's class. And while they do all this, I can see who is doing what and how they have changed the project.

As for tools, you can post pictures, link to other websites, create pages that link internally, all kind of things. Really, the interface for a wiki looks a lot like the interface for a word processing program.

Hope this helps!

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Permalink Reply by Barry Bakin on October 4, 2008 at 12:29am

There is a whole section about wikis on classroom 2.0 vasaki. Look on the list of topics "By tool" and you'll find it at the end of the list. You'll see many ideas about using wikis and many educator wikis to view.

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Permalink Reply by Kelley Irish on October 4, 2008 at 6:00am

Here is my wiki page. I use it to create and host interactive lessons, keep list os web 2.0 brower tools, showcase student multimedia projects, keep parent updated on assignments, keep track og openspirce softwate, and provide parent and teacher tool. The site is HERE

If you click on the link to take you to the St Anthony's Page-you will see alist of the classroom wiki pages from m school as well.

I alsp set up thematic wiki pageswhen student collaborate on projects. I give them page level access just to keep them honesy.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on October 4, 2008 at 6:26am

Vasaki, Here's a list of the stuff we've done, you can see wikis on the list. They are ridiculous easy to set up.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on October 4, 2008 at 6:27am

Kelley, you forgot the link!

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Permalink Reply by Paula on October 4, 2008 at 12:07pm

My AP Calculus classes are scribe-posting to a class wiki.;each day a different student is responsible for summarizing what was done during the class period. The scribe is able to use any web tool they know how to use, embedding pictures or slide-shows to illustrate concepts they have learned. I make my Smartnotebook pages available to the scribe; the rest is up to the scribe! The value in the activity is three-fold; i)teaching a concept is the best way to discover whether you understand it yourself, (ii) the wiki will be a tremendous resource for students absent from class and for all students when reviewing for finals and the AP exam and (iii) it gives me the opportunity to teach some students web2.0 tools.
Three classes are engaged in this activity. The link to one of them is
http://smallstones08p1.wikispaces.com

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Permalink Reply by Denise Fischer on October 4, 2008 at 1:21pm

I'm also just starting a wiki using wikispaces for the fourth graders not only at my school(s), but at another one in our district as well. There's a good video on wiki's by leelefever at creativecommons.com about what a wiki is..you could view it and get a good sense of how a wiki is used. One thing you should do is consult with your principal and get a letter home to the parents about it before using one. Then your students either have to have an email address OR you can create accounts for them. I'd suggest looking at a few different wikis to see what they have to offer in the way of security issues, ease in use in posting and saving, as well as uploading multimedia.

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Permalink Reply by Kelley Irish on October 4, 2008 at 1:39pm

Giant OOPS
Here is my wiki page. I use it to create and host interactive lessons, keep list of web 2.0 brower tools, showcase student multimedia projects, keep parent updated on assignments, keep track of opensource softwate, and provide parent and teacher tools. The site is HERE

If you click on the link to take you to the St Anthony's Page-you will see alist of the classroom wiki pages from my school as well. I am slowly getting all the teachers to host their own wiki 's

I alsp set up thematic wiki pages when student collaborate on projects. I give them page level access just to keep them honest
The project page for 8th grade is here

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Permalink Reply by nathalie ettzevoglou on October 4, 2008 at 9:28pm

Hi! wetpaint is wonderful for creating wikis. I used it with my kids for a semester and found it works amazing. It is very student centered, user-friendly for both teacher and student. I found it very effective and the kids can get really creative with it. importing different widgets works well too as well uploading your own personal pictures for example. As the administrator you can see exactly who is doing the work, what changes, additions, etc are being made to each page and by whom- which is great to know as the teacher and for evaluating your students. You can check my wiki out at www.frenchlit.wetpaint.com and feel free to contact me if you have any other questions.

best of luck
nathalie

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Permalink Reply by vasaki on October 6, 2008 at 1:57am

Dear nathalie i have actually created wiki using wetpaint and was wondering what can I do with it. After seeing your wiki, i basically get an idea of how a wiki looks like and also the other samples posted by others here in this discussion. Thanks to all. I have a question. Can I use wiki as a webpage to upload my course materials, assignments etc?

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Permalink Reply by Kelley Irish on October 6, 2008 at 4:16am

Vasaki,

I have all my assignments posted on my wiki, as well as the kids completed projects. Just think of a wiki as a web page that is easy to edit, and one you can grant others access to modify.

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