The Usefulness of Wiki

Wikipedia is a controversial subject when it comes to the world of education. I know that as a teacher in the middle school we never let our students use Wikipedia as a source. Most of our students do not yet know how to determine what makes a site credible and may not know until they have a technology class that is not even required for all of the students. Also, what really declares a blog credible. Anyone can add, delete, or edit information in a Wiki. For example, below I show a picture of the Wikipedia page of my school district. This page is very outdated and includes statistics for the school district from several years back. I do not know these statistics. However, I did change a few things that I am aware of. Before I had changed it it had the elementary principal listed as Michael Benczarski. This was true in 2010, but since the school year 2011-2012 Krista Bethke has taken that role and Micheal's sole principal ship is at the middle school. I also have added that the elementary is now listed as a focus school. However, even though I am a teacher in the district I would not consider myself as a credible person to write statistics for the school and had the ability to do so.

 

Even though I do not find Wikipedia often a great source for my students. I have been able to use wikis as a great tool of collaboration and communication. In my classroom website  I have been able to create pages for my students and parents aware of the schedule within my classroom. I have also been able to include copies of assignments and classroom notes. It also has links to many resources that we use within the classes. 

Not only have my wiki creations been used as a source for communication. I have created classroom webpages for a few classes that I have taught. With the Century 21 class that I taught, I used Wikispace as a source for collaboration. On the classroom website that I created for educational purposes I invited all of my students to the class. This website had privacy settings that only allow members to see and edit the webpage. This made it safe and secure for my students and helped keep parents mind at ease. On the website each student created their own page from our class homepage. When we worked on projects, we posted products on the page that each person created, and then peer edited each others work right on the website. Students were able to leave comments, help with other students grammar, and have the opportunity to share with the entire class rather than a few people chosen for a peer editing group. This was extremely fun when the class decided to study fairy tales and we created fractured fairy tales.

There are so many useful ways that blogs could be used within the classroom. However, the teacher needs to really take the time to understand and decide the best ways to use them.