The weather just hasn't been cooperating with us and today we were on a one-hour delay, but that means I can still conduct the SchoolLoop training for our middle school teachers after school today (Monday, January 24th). I'm excited about getting everyone on board and fixing, at the very least, an initial Web page. I think the teachers will be pleasantly surprised to find out how user-friendly SchoolLoop is!
My schedule the rest of this week is fairly full as well since I have more SchoolLoop trainings - one at the high school on Wednesday afternoon and one at the elementary school on Thursday afternoon. I will be out of the office on Tuesday due to some dental work being performed (No, I'm not looking forward to that, but it has to be done!) and on Friday due to the monthly regional TIS meeting in Christian County. Hopefully the week will go off without a hitch - no more illnesses and no more winter weather, please!
This week I want to return to the book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson. In some of my past blogs, I discussed what a blog is and how to set up one. Now I want to give you some information on what Richardson says a Wiki is.
Richardson begins by mentioning Wikipedia, which most of us are familiar with as a place to go online to find information. Everyday new entries are being added and others are being updated and most people understand that the "pedia" part of the name refers to the term "encyclopedia". What Richardson says is that most people do not know what the "wiki" part means. The word wiki is a short form of the Hawaiian term wiki-wiki which means "quick". The first wiki was created in 1995 by Ward Cunningham. He "was looking to design an easy authoring tool that might spur people to publish." It is important to note that "a wiki is a Website where anyone can edit anything anytime they want."
With that in mind, you should be aware that makes all of us editors of a sort. A question that is often asked is about the trustworthiness of such a site. If anyone can edit the information at anytime, then how can we trust what is on there? Richardson says that the idea is "There are vastly more editors that want to make it right than those who want to make it wrong." So, how can something like Wikipedia be used in a school setting?
According to Richardson, "whether or not we like the concept of Wikipedia," . . . "we need to teach Wikipedia to our students". His reasoning is that whether we like it or not, students are turning to Wikipedia as a resource, most often first when they are researching something. Richardson notes that wikis are being used by corporations and by project teams as a way to share information and collaborate. Colleges and universities are beginning to use wikis with their students to manage documents, share resources and experiences, etc. Today, there are tens of thousands of wikis out there for just about everything imaginable. Even though Wikipedia may not be an acceptable source of information due to its origins, it does give students a place to start their research and may get them thinking about ideas they would have otherwise missed.
Richardson then asks "So, how exactly do wikis work?" He notes that every page in a wiki has some type of link to "edit". When you click on the link, you see either the code behind the page or the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor for the page. All you have to do is make changes and save. Also, the pages should have a page history section where you can see when changes were made, by whom, and what was changed. The first thing Richardson suggests for teachers to do is to spend some time checking Wikipedia's accuracy for any subject that their students might be researching. Also, make sure you teach students that Wikipedia is, in fact, "a collaboratively written research report". Another thing to consider is whether or not your students should contribute to a Wikipedia entry. As Richardson comments, "If your student produces a great research paper on global warming, why shouldn't she add what she found to the global warming entry at Wikipedia?" Richardson notes that it might be considered another opportunity for our students to contribute what they learn to a larger audience.
Check back later for more information on this blog about wikis and other ways they can be used in schools and classrooms.
