Applications of Wikis

To get a sense of some of the possibilities when using a wiki with students, I went to Edublog’s Best Educational Wiki Nominees for 2007. The list gives 2 noteworthy examples of:

Collaborative Storytelling – The Salute to Seuss site has been very carefully planned. It needed to be since it was open to students worldwide and ran for 5 months. Good background information, standards and a booklist were described at the outset. Students were able to contribute book reviews, activities and links to their own Seuss sites.

Constructing Resources – On a very different note, the Math 12V Outcomes Portfolio is a wiki where students construct a page which explains a math outcome and connects that outcome to a sample problem. The students really embraced the challenge. There are some high quality lessons given, complete with graphics of very tricky mathematical notation.

A more modest collaborative writing project was set up to allow students to contribute to the story of Terry the Tennis Ball. The site is definitely allowing young students to do their own thing and has a lot of charm. Some differentiation is happening, as at least one student included a link to a different site.

A Grade 5 class is using the Grade 5M Wikispace to create a chain story about 4 underwater explorers. Their story, Adventure in the Trench, is part of a larger Marine Studies integrated topic. They have made great use of the wiki format. Links to some other resources are included.

The Library Zone is quite a deep wiki site. It spans a whole spectrum of uses, including collaborative research (Exploring Space, Dinosaurs, Weather and Ladybugs), sharing links and student discussion. It even fulfills the role of a virtual library.

As I looked at example wikis, a few other sites came to my attention. Each of them was helpful in addressing the potential downsides of using a wiki with students.

Assessment - It is critical to make expectations clear to students before a wiki project is started. Because of the open-ended nature and accessibility of a wiki, students need more guidance than usual as to teacher expectations. A great example of an assessment rubric can be seen at the Flat Classroom Project.

Appearance – You may have asked yourself the question Why Are Wikis So Ugly? as Brian Lamb did. This may be the cost of having a structure that is so easy to edit. The quality of the content may far outreach the visual appeal. Lamb suggests that a wiki author might use some tasteful style sheets. I was disappointed to learn that PBWiki charges more that $50 to allow the user to even have access to css. Students who are focused more on the visual than the content can be encouraged to use images and font choices as effectively as possible.

Control – This post describes a mixed experience with using a wiki in a visual arts class. Among the many things learned was the idea that if a wiki is going to reach its potential as a tool, the teacher needs to be willing to give up some control:

This particular challenge bears resemblance to the one posed by constructivist teaching philosophy. To truly empower students within collaborative or co-constructed activities requires the teacher to relinquish some degree of control over those activities. The instructor’s role shifts to that of establishing contexts or setting up problems to engage students. In a wiki, the instructor may set the stage or initiate interactions, but the medium works most effectively when students can assert meaningful autonomy over the process.

posted by John Lobe @ 2:03 PM