Did you know .....
What is the meaning of Wikis?
Where does Wikis come from Wikis?
Ward Cunningham created the first wiki in 1995, who was looking to design an easy authoring
tool that might spur people to publish. And the key word here is "easy,"
because, plainly put, a wiki is a Web site where anyone can edit anything anytime
they want.
Did you know ...?
Wikipedia is one of the most important sites for educators to
understand. It represents the potential of collaboration on the Web.
Wikipedia is the poster child for the collaborative construction
of knowledge and truth that the new, interactive Web facilitates. It is, to
me at least, one of the main reasons the transformative potential
of all of these technologies.
Why we need to teach Wikipedia to our students?
Threre is much to learn in
the process of using Wikipedia that can help our students become better learners-narnely, collaboration and negotiation skills.
Like blogs, wikis are beginning to make inroads in just about every area of life. Corporations like Disney, McDonalds, Sony, and BMW have started using wikis to manage documents and information. The city of Rochester, New York, is using a wiki to let people share
resources, experiences, and favorite diversions (Rocwiki.org).
So, there are a fundamental reason that as professors, we need to teach Wikipedia and others wiki such as Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikispecies, and Wikiquotes. If in their context is very commun to use wikis Why they cannot do the same? It is in their life we as a profesor, we have the responsabilty to teach them how to use that important tool into the class and outside of the class.
Are you ready to begin thinking about how a wiki might
work in your classroom?
*Students might use it to create their own class Wikipedia.
*They could add graphics and links,annotations and reflections.
*They could also post PowerPoint presentations, video and audio files.
*Introduce them to the concept of a wiki.
*Show them how it works, have them pick an entry to edit, review their edits with them, have them share the link when their work is posted, and then have them track their edits to see how others might edit them.
EXAMPLES OF WIKIS IN K-1 2 EDUCATION
Louise Maine's wiki work at her school in Punxsutawney,
Pennsylvania. She and her freshman biology students are tracking their work from class, sharing links, posting results to experiments, and basically building a text for their course (tinyurl.comlnr9 l yr). More importantly, her students are learning the literacies of collaboratively constructing content as
they work with her to add value to the site. While only her students can edit it, the wiki is open for anyone in the world to view.
Jason Welker at the Zurich International School uses a WetPaint wiki for his AP Economics course. His students use the wiki to create a year-long study guide for the AP exam.
there is PlanetMath.com (tinyurl.com/90rxf), "a virtual community
that aims to help make mathematical knowledge more accessible."
This is a dynamic community of math educators that is collaboratively creating a mathematics encyclopedia (il la Wikipedia), and anyone can participate.
Jason Welker uses wikis to teach math in a dynamic
way. There
are a lot of people that hate math, then, that was the
principal reason for what Jason Welker and others teachers
thought in how those students could change
that idea and they start to see math in a friendly way.
"Operation Katrina 2009" site(tinyurl.comlc62ja2) is at once a diary, photo album, and video record that allows parents and community members (and other readers from around the world) to share in the experience. It's a great use of a wiki site to chronicle and archive all of the good work those students are doing.
The
site "Operation Katrina 2009 is
an original way to
relate a real event for the purpose you want to achieve the teacher
which is students write about those difficult moments.
WIKI TOOLS FOR SCHOOL
Creating your wiki is as easy as filling in the form on the page linked
above, a process that takes maybe 45 seconds if you're a fast typist. (A
minute if not.) Enter a username, a password, and a working e-mail address, click the "yes" button to make a wiki, give your wiki a name (no spaces allowed, by the way), select the type of wiki you want (most educators pick "protected" to start), click the box to certify that you're using it for educational purposes, and you're up and running. All you need to do is click the "Edit This Page" icon when your wiki site appears and you can start creating the content on your site.
Did you know....?
Wikispaces has provided over 1 80,000 free wikis to educators.
