CEd0535: Session Two - Wikis at Work

It would be amusing to go back through my blogs and count the number of times I made comments, like "I never realized..." Seems I'm repeating myself constantly. This week is no different, and once again, I'm on a totally new path in my curriculum. I'm quickly discovering that when it comes to the stuff we learn, I'm not content to wait til next year to include them. Instead, I stop everything I'm doing now and shift totally.

Like many others in class, I'm sure, I had understood wikis and how they are used, but I never considered actually incorporating a wiki for my school where students could go and add information. I have created a Ning, but really I'm only using it as a blogging tool, not a place where student research could be posted and where other students could go and add to or make corrections. I guess I just never thought about the potentials of a wiki. Now that I'm aware, my mind is exploring all sorts of wikis we could create. For one, I could create a wiki that focuses on saints. One of my big complaints with our curriculum is that each grade level explores saints and often repeats the same activities over and over again. Too redundant. If I created a wiki, however, the students could do their initial research in Grade 3 or 4 and then when they have to repeat their saint research, they could explore further and simply modify the wiki. Or perhaps they will select a new saint and then check their saint on our wiki to see if the information is accurate. In addition, they might find more interesting pictures or video on which to expand. This project could really be cool. There are lots of websites out there that focus on saints, but most of them are geared toward an older age level. There's not much there that is directed towards kids. Our wiki could fill that niche.

I'd like to start this immediately. As stated above, I don't like to delay long when I have an inspiration. The difficulty this time, however, is that I think I do need to first develop a policy for publishing on the Internet. If we want this wiki to be useful, we're going to have to go public, and doing so without getting parental permission first may send some of my parents into orbit. I will also need to take necessary measures to ensure that my students don't disclose personal information. This means not only monitoring them but also making sure they really, really understand why they should not do so. I also then need to get talking with my teachers to see how we could make all of this gel. Ideally, I'd like to create the wiki and monitor it and then have the actual religion teachers in charge of its use. Since Wikipedia is about the only wiki my teachers are aware of, I'll need to spend time inservicing them.