Wikis

Today I got to explore Wikis and how this piece of technology can be useful in the classroom. I came to find that Wikis are a lot like Google Docs in which you can invite people to edit your documents, power points or spreadsheets all on a website or page. It is very convenient that you don't have to e-mail people back and forth to accomplish what you want where a lot of confusion could be created. The difference between Google Docs and Wikis are that Wikis are a little more personal where you can create a profile, change the background or theme of your page and really make it your own while in a Google Doc it is just a simple document that looks the same as everyone elses document and is not directly on one of your pages. the personalization of Wikis is what makes them similar to a Weebly or this blog that I'm typing out. All three of these tools can really become yours where you can change the different settings to make the tool more to your liking. the difference between a Wiki and a Weebly or Blog though is that someone cannot come around and edit your Weebly or Blog. The only thing they can do is add a comment or a message, which could get confusing to follow if you were talking about something important.
One way I would use a wiki in the classroom is if the students were working on group projects and they all had to collaborate together to get it done, but did not have the time out of school to accomplish it or if they all had different parts they had to do. You could give each student a role and the person who is the leader or facilitator could create the wiki and all the pages, which could represent the different parts of the project, and the students could go on and edit/work on the pages at their own time. Students can hold each other accountable with each part of the project and if they get stuck or need help the other students can easily see what they are working on and help them out. They can also add and delete things that could improve the project and look after each other's work. Another way Wikis could be used in a classroom is for reading groups. In many classrooms students are broken up into groups when reading a book, whether it's the same book across the classroom or different books for different reading abilities. Students could collaborate with one another and talk about questions that the teacher assigns the students could discuss and use a wiki to do this. The teacher can also see the conversations of the students and probe the students to think more about their responses. This will help the teacher see what types of connections the student's are making about the reading, figure out who is reading the book (which could be a form of assessment instead of having a pop quiz) and see what the teacher needs to emphasize more in their classroom discussions about the books. These are just two ways that a wiki can be really helpful in the classroom and I'm sure there are endless possibilities for this tool to be used.