Short panel-style discussion (multiple speakers) describing practical classroom uses of wikis. Speakers note that public visibility creates accountability, wikis let students and teachers collaboratively create and comment on documents, enable work outside class (home access) and help continue projects between infrequent meetings. The tone is pragmatic and enthusiastic about wikis as a collaborative tool.
If what you're doing right is publicly visible, right, then you are incented to do things the right way. Here's a space. Go work together, Be polite, be nice and be democratic. It's important that all of us are working on it. And once again, because it's easy, then anyone can go in and edit.
This is actually a way for us to, when we're not meeting, because we only meet like twice a week, but in those days that we don't meet, this is a way for us to continue working on the project.
We've had some teachers that have done some great wikis where they've actually had kids collaborate and put in comments and you know, create a document, put in comments, have each other comment on each other's pages. And so those things become very powerful because now it's not just the kids turning in the paper, that teacher, the kids are turning the paper into the wiki and now everybody gets to see it.
There's a number of schools, for example, that are looking for ways to honor the knowledge and what we bring into the room. And no better way of doing that than having a wiki area where you can work together.
You see them collaborating, they can do this at home. A number of students I have that can't finish it in a period will go home. They can log in instant access. It's the same thing. So I really feel this is a huge, huge collaborating tool that has just, I mean, I've only begun to scratch the surface myself.
How to use a wiki now becomes a collaborative process with students. Is that, how did you do that? Oh, you put that, you put that graphic in there. How'd you put that graphic into that page?
It's not like a one way street. It's not information coming from the lead or the one person or the person that's in charge. It's the whole group can add to it.
Reflection is at the heart of learning. And one of the things is that when you're working in a wiki or when you're working in writing, that's an opportunity for reflecting on your ideas and having other people come in and give you feedback on it and then keeping it going.
