Thing 7 - Wiki Whati?

I am not very familiar with wikis.  I have not used one before in class or collaborated on one.  I have used Wikipedia to gain information about a topic, but have usually taken what it said as fact.  After reading the latest chapter in Richardson's Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, I now know a lot more.  I have learned that a wiki is a site that allows everyone to be an editor.  It allows for anyone to change anything at any point in time.  This was a very scary concept to me.  Maybe, partly because I am pretty averse to change, so the fact that someone could come in and change what I had just put on a site bothered me a little... no, a lot.  I remember when Wikipedia first came about and people were changing things like crazy to be funny and see who would notice.  Now, thankfully, I have learned that there are people behind the scenes to work as the "bouncers" who "kick out" the purposefully untrue information.

After taking a peek at a some wikis, I can now see some obvious benefits to creating wikis.   I love the Schools in the Past wiki where Mrs. Cassidy's first grade class asks people to weigh in on how playgrounds, studies, and rules in school are alike and different based on the time period. I can see how my students would like to hear about this kind of information.  In the Go West wiki, I noticed the editing part when looking at the history of the posts.  I liked seeing the grammatical corrections that were being made.  It was neat to see editing in this way.  What a great behind the scenes moment for the teacher to observe.  In the Salute to Seuss wiki, I liked how the classes provided book reviews.  I was a little unsure of how to navigate around the page and wasn't sure if it was because of my inexperience of wikis or the page format. I'll be able to answer that question with more wiki exploration.  But, by far the "ah - ha" moment with wikis came for me while reading Cool Cat Teacher Blog's post about her use of wikis the first time.  Her post gave me the mental visual aid that I needed to finally get it and understand a great use of wikis.  Her students were so excited to collaborate in this technological way on book reviews and study guide notes.  Students were able to add information to a page that would be truly beneficial to other students, AND they weren't just told they had to do it as an assignment, they actually wanted to come in and add posts.  The excitement she talked about that became contagious among the students made me want to take part too.