Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Week 7 Thing 16 Wikis

My favorite example was the sample school wiki it had a lot going on but it clearly demonstrated many ways students could use wikis. I liked how they have blogs for personal opinions, scribes for posting class notes, and wikis for sharing facts and for discussions. I still need to read up more on how they work on the sites provided to become clear on uses. I noticed that on some wikis you had to have a log-in and that seems smart on a classroom wiki. What are the aspects of safety on the Internet that librarians and teachers instruct their students before starting activities like these? Being new to this, would someone please share this side of using wikis, blogs, and podcasts with students. I noticed that student's first names were only used. The name and city of the school or library is usually given. I want to be prepared on how to answer questions that come from parents and my administrators as to how I am keeping students safe. I know that is a concern in my community.

As far as uses, I can think of many...book reviews, book talks, contests for our special activities, sharing poetry, sharing short stories, favorite lists, student blogs, posting notes, posting links to helpful websites, videocasts of tutorials on how to use school technology, student projects, sharing examples of quality student projects, and posting rubrics for projects.

1 comment:

Joan Tracy said...

I work in a high school, and use wikis fairly often for projects. I always create my wikis so that they need a password before they can be edited. I have created wikis that require log-in, but in that case, the students need to join the wiki community and need an email. If you do not want , or cannot allow, students to use email, login wikis can be a problem. Also, students forget their login!! I have gone to premium services on 2 wiki sites- seedwiki and pbwiki. With premium services you have more control on who can view and edit wikis, and it is fairly inexpensive, about 150 a year for each.

I don't worry much about public viewing of the wiki. I do not use our schools name in the URL. I insist students use first names only. I put my email address up on wikis to allow students quick access to me, but that is only email address I allow. I monitor content often on wikis that are active and remove inappropriate stuff. ( I've only had to do that twice and both were just wise guy stuff)