Three ways to use a school wiki

I have a student sit at a student computer and keep track of daily assignments and sort of blog about what we are doing.  It is helpful to let parents know what is going on in the classroom, and if a student is absent, they can catch up on work without having to guess what they missed. 

Here is a link to what it looks like: http://mcpclass.pbworks.com/

1. Ask students to share their writing online.
2. Replace 'cardboard projects' with 'wiki projects'
3. Use a wiki for staff professional learning

Here are four ways we use it in the library
• Share library events with our community
• Communicate and interact with school book clubs
• Post and Share student projects for grade levels to share at home
• Centralize all research links and on-line databases for students to access from home

We've used ours as a way to create a collaborative revision resource based on the learning objectives for the AS level, the textbooks for our course are hateful so this has been a lovely way of giving them something else to work from

I use my wiki as a place for students to post information on the topics they are researching. They use this research to create websites. Wikis make life so much easier for everyone. The students were able to work collaboratively. They each had their own wiki page, but when they found something for someone else in their group, they were able to post it on their page for them. Students were also able to leave comments when they got stuck or did not understand something. They were able to get a timely response by using the wikis. We loved using them, and I am looking forward to learning more about them.

I use my wiki as a place for students to post information on the topics they are researching. They use this research to create websites. Wikis make life so much easier for everyone. The students were able to work collaboratively. They each had their own wiki page, but when they found something for someone else in their group, they were able to post it on their page for them. Students were also able to leave comments when they got stuck or did not understand something. They were able to get a timely response by using the wikis. We loved using them, and I am looking forward to learning more about them.

I love how schools create news podcasts with the wiki. I'll definitely be implementing this next year!

I am interested in how schools use podcasts and wikis?  Please tell us more.  This is interesting, hummmmmmmmm.

Kristine, how do you find a wiki as a better alternative to classroom blogging?  We currently use blogs in our classroom and wikis are blocked.  What would I use as rationale to have wikis unblocked and as an alternative to blogging sites such as Edublogs?

To help our teachers get started, one of the pages I added was "Books We Love" and set it up so students can write 1-3 sentences about a book they read and categorize it as fiction or non-fiction.

my first foray into Wikis was to creat an old fashioned KWL chart on a topic, say, rocks.  The children wrote what they knew about rocks and what they wanted to know in the first two columns.  Then, I opened the website and answered questions for the whole class.  After I taught the class, the childre posted What I learned in the third column.   Everyone saw misspelings, bad grammar, etc.  The second time I tried it with electricity, the quality of what the kids posted was 100 % better.  I guess having their peers see what they wrote made them want to do better entries.
S

I have a student sit at a student computer and keep track of daily assignments and sort of blog about what we are doing.  It is helpful to let parents know what is going on in the classroom, and if a student is absent, they can catch up on work without having to guess what they missed. 
Here is a link to what it looks like: [url]

-mrmcp

I saw your website, what a cool idea.  I noticed that alot of the editing was done by SCribe.  Is that a fake student that has a commonly known password so that they can edit when it is their job that week? or is that you?
ssp 

Wikis allow for collaboration.  With a blog, you have one primary contributor 'dictating' the route of the discussion.  Wikis are more 'real world'.  My opinion.  :)

Wikis allow for collaboration.  With a blog, you have one primary contributor 'dictating' the route of the discussion.  Wikis are more 'real world'.  My opinion.  :)

-pattiw

Blog or wiki?

This is a question that we have discussed a lot and still find that  wikis and blogs can do many of the same things.  You can respond to posts on both, you can add lots of plugins to do lots of really neat things on both of them.  Both of them encourage reflecting on the work of others, but a blog is usually created by one author who posts something he has written, often with links to other writers as background info, and with invitations for others to comment.  A blog is a series starting with an article, then a stream of related comments.
A wiki can do this commenting, but it's not as pretty as on a blog and in a wiki the commenting is on it's own separate page.  Where a wiki shows its power is when a document will be enhanced by having many co-authors and where the collection of the information from many is what will provide the best finished product.  A wiki is a wonderful place to easily create documents that will evolve and change.

Kristine, how do you find a wiki as a better alternative to classroom blogging?  We currently use blogs in our classroom and wikis are blocked.  What would I use as rationale to have wikis unblocked and as an alternative to blogging sites such as Edublogs?

-theresawhite16

In addition to previous comments, I would note that blogs are organized in reverse order of the postings made.  The most recent post is always on top and the blog is organized by month and year going back in time.  This type of organization lends itself to projects or information that are most logical when the information is time-related or you want to follow a train of thought with comments and being made and responded to.

Wikis are not dependent on a time-based organizational scheme.  If you think of an idea or project that you want to emphasize, you can create a new page and a new link at the top of your wiki and it gets the primary focus immediately; that emphasis won't disappear as time goes on, as long as you keep that link at the top of your Frontpage.

Our school is using a wiki for our accreditation process.  It's a convenient way to provide access to accreditation related information, the schedule for the year, and links to surveys (done at survey monkey) that need to be taken. Having everything posted on the wiki will serve as one of the ways that we will be able to demonstrate participation and communication between all of the stakeholders. 

Additionally, when committee members start writing the different sections, those who feel comfortable with collaborative writing can use the wiki to work on the sections simultaneously instead of passing around flash drives or emailing files around.

I also think that the focus of a wiki is more of a community of ideas rather than a topic or question generated by a single person. I also feel that it's  a much more organized workspace.

I have used my wiki as a collaborative writing workspace.  We take our writing projects through the typical writing process but we do all of the peer editing using the wiki.