24.3.09

Wiki happiness

What is a wiki?

I have to confess I am often finding it hard to explain, and I have been developing one for use over the past week or so.

Often we seem to see wikis as blank pages ready to be filled with factual information as in wikipedia but how useful is that to a teacher or a pupil in school?

I have been thinking of it in terms of teachers collaborating on documents together. For instance if teachers are standardising their assessments in a secondary school department, it might be nice to discuss what we mean when we give a key stage 3 student a level 5. We might even want to link to an example of level 5 work. Others may want to refine the definition given. Hmm.

To do that it needs structure. Not that the structure has to stay fixed, it can be adaptable but it must have a starting point. So I have been creating skeletons of wikis for others to use. Assessment for staff - research based wikis for students with particular topics identified, links already made and so on.

I will have to wait for the feedback (I can't post a link as they are all behind passwords!)

1 comment:

  1. I have just finished a short-term mini project on the use of wikis in a classroom setting. You can have a look at the results at the wiki page. It lasted for 5 50 minute lessons over a period of 5 weeks and was interesting from the point of view of the technicalities involved and the independent learning aspects.

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