Eight Ways to Use School Wikis

With school just around the corner teachers are beginning to plan for next school year. One way that teachers can increase collaboration among their students is to use Wikis. Wikispaces can also be used to store digital materials, screencasts, presentations, PDFs and other content. Wikis are also a great way for teachers to collaborate and share within a school or school district. Let’s look at the eight ways to use wikis in your school.

1. Decrease disruptions of instructional time
   a. Instead of everyone listening to all the announcements for an entire school, teachers can read over the principal created wiki and read only the announcements that apply to their students.
2. Make meetings more efficient
   a. Team meetings and planning can be collaborated thru a wiki
   b. Each team can have their own team meeting page on the wiki site
3. Collaborate on important documents
   a. Wikis are a great place to create, revise, and update the school education plan
4. Enhance professional development
   a. All materials needed for professional development workshops can be housed in a wiki for the school
   b. Discussions can be created for each professional development workshops for teachers to extend their learning of the materials
5. Share and collaborate on curriculum maps
   a. Teachers can collaborate and plan out their curriculum maps by subject, grade level or by school thru a wiki
6. Save trees and time
   a. Many documents for the school can be housed in a wiki and teachers can access from the wiki printing only what they need
7. A portal for all your lessons
   a. All lessons for a particular subject can be uploaded to a wiki where teachers can discuss, create and collaborate on the lesson plans throughout the school year
8. How to get started
   a. Go to http://pbworks.com to learn more about creating a wiki for yourself, other teachers or for your school
   b. Do a search for Educational Wikis on the internet to see all the ways schools, teachers and students are using wikis
   

Article from Tech & Learning July 21, 2009
Eight Ways to Use School Wikis by Lisa Nielsen
http://www.techlearning.com/article/22064

3 Challenges to Wiki Use in Instruction

The April edition of The Journal posted an article that dealt with the benefits and instructional uses of wikis to engage students. A wiki should promote evaluating, synthesizing, elaborating, analyzing, problem solving, decision making, knowledge, base construction, argumentation/justification and learning communities according to Wake Forest University.

So how can teachers use wikis to ensure higher levels of engagement with students? Three challenges were presented.

1. Creating meaningful assignments: a wiki assignment should be collaborative with all students participating to complete the assignment. The process and outcome should depend on the collaborative success of the students. Some examples would be –
   a. The assignment is open and not closed
   b. The assignment requires participation
   c. The assignment uses the participation to move forward
2. Grade Value for Constructed Input: a student’s grade should reflect their active participation within the wiki as well as the final product. Some examples would be –
   a. Working with and building on existing information
   b. Inputting new information
   c. Synthesis of ideas and relevant use
3. Collective knowledge use: learning takes place for the students when they are able to apply what they have learned in some meaningful way. Some examples would be –
   a. Non-complex problems
   b. Preset solutions
   c. Inadequate time allowed for the recess

Wikis can provide an effective way for students to engage in higher-level thinking skills through collaborative learning. Teachers will need to plan carefully when and how to use wikis encouraging students to explore content, discover new information and work together towards a solution and/or final product. By using a problem-based approach students should acquire the skills needed for higher-level processing skills and complex problem solving skills.

To read the full article please go to: http://www.thejournal.com/articles/24206_1
Article written by Ruth Reynard: "3 Challenges to Wiki Use in Instruction," T.H.E. Journal, 4/1/2009, http://www.thejournal.com/articles/24206