Week Three Reflection

Wikis….where to start?!  I really enjoyed reading about wikis because although I am very familiar with Wikipedia, I had never really put much thought into how it got to be Wikipedia.  It was interesting to me to see how a wiki can become so large, and so quickly at that.  I was not aware that it was possible to create my own wiki until this assignment.  I think of myself as someone who is pretty tech-savvy, and felt “out of the loop” with wikis.  The videos were really neat to me.  I would love to be able to create something like that in my own classroom for a different way to explain things.  (The way they broke it down so simply just by moving small pieces of paper around and using a dry erase board and putting it into a video at the same time-genius idea!)  I think students would really respond well to it, I did!  When I actually went to create my own wiki, I thought the initial set-up was quite simple.  What I am struggling with a bit is what to put onto my wiki in general (so maybe I am now lacking the creativity gene!).  It will take some playing around with to get ideas and to create something that I am happy with, but I will continue to mess with it. 

As far as using a wiki in my classroom, I have about a thousand ideas.  In general, when I learn about a new tool like this, my mind starts racing and I seem to come up with so much.  Some may be total failures, some may work out perfectly.  I’m not quite sure yet because I don’t have any experience with wikis.  One idea that I imagine working would be to use a wiki as a base for my culture projects.  Much like the camping idea on the video, each culture project usually begins with a list of what needs to be done and who is going to do it.  Culture projects in the target language could be completed with 4 students.  The students would create a wiki to organize their project.  The home page of the wiki would include important dates and general information about the project and quick notes to the other group members.  Each student could then link a page to the wiki and display what he or she has accomplished or found.  I think this would also be helpful to the teacher because I would be able to see what each student is contributing (or not).  Internet pages that are used for research could be directly linked to the wikis so that each student has access to the other group members’ research.  Using a wiki for this type of project may reduce the amount of classroom time that teachers need to allow for group meeting time (and this seems to be a lot of extra time because “we have practice” and “we can’t meet any time outside of school” and “we don’t have rides” …you know what I mean).  This may create more of an independent part of a group project, but I think it would be more efficient that just sitting in the classroom having group meetings or maybe going to the lab to “research”. 

Overall, I think wikis could be very useful in the classroom, work, or general life environments.  I am excited to learn more about how to use them and how to make them the most effective.