Nuts and Bolts #1 - Wikis in the Classroom

I'm getting ready to head back into the classroom for another year. As does everyone else, I've got a lot of decisions ot make about tools, routines, and adjusted goals. As I do some planning and thinking to begin the year, I want to make my thinking public and look for other ideas and suggestions that might come along. As well, I thought these posts might be helpful to other people who are considering using some of these tools in their own classrooms.

Wikis are one of the easiest, most valuable tools I've used over the past several years. Easy to edit and track, they open up collaborative learning spaces in time and geography. We've worked in several spaces as part of our regular Social Studies curriculum and for our International Teen Life project. At the end of last school year we migrated our Social Studies space to Wikispaces and left it for this years class to work with, add to, and improve.

This is one of the most valuable things about wikis. They allow students to see what their peers have done over the past years as part of the mandated curriculum. Students make connections with students from the past and also build on their knowledge, seeing each other as legitimate sources of information and learning.

We learn how to do some wiki basics together during class time. But once the students know how to make edits, I immediately give them the opportunity to earn a certain number of marks (often 20) over the course of a week. I've stolen a page from Darren K. when I think about using wikis and marking. Constructive modifications, defined as improving the writing style, spelling, grammar, or adding small facts to an already constructed page are worth 2 marks each. Significant contributions on the other hand means adding an entirely new page or section to our knowledge base. These can earn students up to 5 marks each. I simply hang a chart in the classroom which I'll update each morning with the number of marks earned by each student, allowing them to check what they need to do in order to gain their 20.

I like to start this process early in the week and give some class time so that I will be there to help them at the beginning. We go through some of the edits they've made mid - week, and I will point out some of the great things that students have done. At the end of the week we go through these again, giving students a chance for some feedback from me and from each other.

Using this system I've learned several things:

1.) Students will often go over and above the minimum required assignment once they see the additions and changes that are being made to our collective knowledge.

2.) Working this way allows students to choose their level of participation and what they are most comfortable doing. Over time, saving the marking charts, I can also track the kinds of contributions made by individual students and discuss these with them, pushing them into deeper levels of thinking.

3.) Outside links are important and a legitimate contribution. Students who link to videos, sound files, images, etc. are contributing as much knowledge as those who write.

As the year passes on, I've always found that students will begin doing much of this work on their own and during their own time. This is especially true if the wiki is being used as an internationally collaborative space allowing students to conquer timezone differences through posts and edits.

Simple to use, free and powerful. Wikis are a cornerstone of collective knowledge formation and network construction.

technorati tags:wikis, wikispaces, knowledge, classroom

Comments

[Rob]

I enjoyed reading your post this morning. I subscribe to a number of education focused blogs and sometimes feel frustrated by the academic rather practical nature of the discussion.

So, more power to you - I can go and apply what you're discussing, I can show students what your students are doing and (most importantly) I can show teachers in our school an eClassroom model that they could adopt.

[Kyle Lichtenwald]

Clarence, thanks for the in depth description, it helps me visualize my future wiki endeavors. I look forward to the next installment of Nuts & Bolts.

[Jason Cummings]

Thanks for the practical thoughts on wiki assessment. I used several wikis in my Spanish classes last year, but I often felt that we weren't using them to their fullest. Many times the assignment died after one or two rounds of peer editing. I love the idea of giving time and credit for everyone to expand the group's knowledge. I may just employ this strategy in my first wiki project of the year.

[marcopolo47]

The Teenlife project looks/sounds interesting. Is it still live?