Are you sick of the heaps of binders you have in storage full of meeting notes, IST's, 504's, collaboration material, etc...? The Innovative Educator blog site had some great information about how to use wikis not only in the classroom, but also as teachers and administrators. The blog "The Innovative Educator: 8 Ways to Use A School Wiki to Increase Communication, Collaboration and to Enrich Instruction" outlines several good practices for wikis. I agree with many of the suggestions and I feel that confining all the daily materials in one nice, neat package is very appealing in a profession where we are all running around adrift in a sea of paperwork. ANd that doesn't even include all the student paperwork, I'm just talking daily management here.
One of the first suggestions is
"1. Decrease Disruption of Instructional Time with Digital Daily Announcements".
This happens to be the only use of wiki that I don't agree with amongst the other useful possibilities. This is assuming you have a classroom full of very attentive, very responsible students that will actually sit and thouroughly read the day's announcements (and then not instantly forget them). The thought of taking the time to have each and every kid get situated with a working laptop (assuming there are enough for every kid in the whole school to use..which there aren't), log on (let me share with you that on a daily basis at least 10 of my students come to me and ask for their password to log on, which they have forgotten in the transfer from one class to the next..and then return to me later to ask again), read the announcements, and THEN start class...I just don't see the point. The announcements take 2 minutes at most and serve as a good reminder to students. This is one of those situations where I feel that pushing technology just for the sake of technology is the drive.
That comment aside, I see a lot of merit in using wiki's for organizing meetings, uncluttering desks, having schedules posted and collaborating on curriculum maps.
Specifically, our school is working on a schoolwide push towards better acquisition of vocabulary, drawing connections between classes in terms of term usage. A wiki would be very useful for starting a vocab list that each teacher can add to. The list could then be organized according to usage and definition and easily available for teachers to edit or peruse for their own classes.
My only question here really is a question of time. The amount of time it takes to sit down at a computer, read all the necessary information, and then provide input and respond to issues, isn't granted to the typical teacher during the school day. Time would need to be provided so that staff could properly use the wikis successfully.
I like that you brought up the fact that not all students are provided with computers. Sure they can take time in the class to share the one or two computers, but how will you have enough time to allow all the students get a chance to go on? Especially when some of them cannot do this work on their own computers at home.
ReplyDeleteSo although, wikis in theory could save a lot of time, educators need the proper tools in order to achieve the ideal goals of a wiki.
You are concerned about the amount of time it takes to read through all the wikis and post comments, but do you not do the same thing with the students' paperwork? Would you not have to read through all their work and comment on it just as well? Personally, I cannot read things off the computer for a long period of time, my eyes need a break. I can read things off paper much easier - so if you're the same I understand how wikis may take a long time. However, perhaps if you use it for only select subjects or if you use it for bigger projects? This way it's not something that needs to be checked all the time.
I really like your idea to use it for vocabulary. That's a great way to get students to define and give examples of their words in a sentence as a group effort.
I concern with the time limitation you mention at last. May I disagree with it? I think we have much more flexible time than before attribute to wiki. It is no doubt that teachers sometimes work after school or even weekends, because we may not finish the work in a limited time at school. wiki provides teacher more time to work at home and communicate with students.This saves a lot of time at school which teachers spend on communicating with students face to face.
ReplyDeleteI love the fact that not only students and teachers can use Wikis. A lot of teachers might think that Wikis is useful only for projects. On the other hand, Wikis can be also used as a communication tool between teachers and administrators. In addition, Wikis can create an environment where teachers from the same subject can share their ideas and thoughts for a better education. It is true that it might take too much time to start your daily class using technologies. But what we can do is use Wikis and other great tools for projects and other assignments in order to make them a little more different and interactive, since all students are different.
ReplyDelete