We Want Wikis

Technology is ever changing, and there are some great apparatus to find content about any
subject that you as a student or teacher may be interested in; one of those apparatuses could
be a Wiki. Wikis have become the go-to source for information, and created by anyone with an
idea and a connection to the internet. As an educator, I began exploring Wikis for material that I
could use with my students. On these Wikis, I usually would look for resource links and access
academic materials that my students could easily download or activate with a simple click of the
mouse. Once my school turn into a one-to-one program, I decided to create my own for my
students msbivens.wikispaces.com. When I first designed my Wiki one of the many things, I
need to make sure that my student could accomplish a certain task on my wiki: First was can
they (students) access material for my class. Second could they communicate with their peers
and me, and finally could they submit work. In the article The State of Wiki Usage in the U.S. K12 Schools:... the article gives a great checklist of questions to ask oneself when creating and
exploring educational wikis (Reich, Murnane, and Willett, 2012). When creating your wiki, it is
always great to look and examine wikis created by other educators or students. Below are some
wikis that might help in your construction or use in the classroom.
Wikispaces Page

My Notes

Discovery Utopia

This Wiki offers a great project for students to

collaborate and discuss among their peers
the conception of a perfect society and what
that entails. It has an organized layout; each
student page has a discussion chat icon for
students to connect easily with their peers if
they have questions or suggestions.

Great Debate 2008

This Wiki page offers another look at using

project a wiki space as a hub to showcase
your students work. The Great Debate 2008,
provides a digital discussion of several
controversial topics. The site clearly
demonstrates students writing and persuasive
skills. The site does lack organization, and it
is very hard to determine the creators of the
content on individual pages, but also there is
not clear collaboration or discussion among
the students who created the page.

Mrs. Lindsey

One of my favorite wiki space sites for its

creative use of icons for students and
educators accessibility of materials. RSS
feeds are also available to students, as well

as a parent-specific area is demarcated

clearly.
I Can Be Productive Too
Shifting from the use of Wikispaces, another great
platform for adding more productivity to your
website would be the use of Googles Educational
Application, its offers multiple ways for students to
interact with their peers in and outside of class.
Students engagement using Google Apps can be
through the use of sharing documents, forms, and
presentations. Each one of these options offers
students the opportunity to share and collaborate
on the an assignment simultaneously. Google
provides plenty of storage for their cloud-based
storage, so students can save their material and be
able to access from their mobile device, tablets,
and computers.
Another great productivity program available for free download is Microsofts OneNote. My
students have been using it lately as a way to collect and store their research for their current
project based learning assignment. Students can upload audio, video, PDF files, and images
into the OneNote application. What is great about the program, students can monitor each
other's progress and me as the teacher also has access
to their content. Since, I teach many students with
diverse needs, the ability to upload a variety of material
into the platform is great. For instance, I have a student
who needs to have some work transcribed for them, they
can record their thoughts onto the OneNote page, and I
can retrieve their information quickly. OneNote
challenges students to create a plan and to logically
layout what it is they need to do. It keeps them organized
and also creates an environment where they have to
analyze and make self-assessments of their progress.

Another great application mentioned by Solomon and Schrum (2014) for collaboration and to
get a quick capture of what your students understand
during or at the end of a lesson is Padlet. I use it as a
prompt for student discussion and to gauge their prior
knowledge of particular subjects in history. Students
can upload video and images along with their written
responses. It is very quick and engages students in
real-time.

References
Bivens, A. (2011). United States history - home. Retrieved February 25, 2016, from
https://msbivens.wikispaces.com/
Google for education: Save time and stay connected. Retrieved February 25, 2016, from
https://www.google.com/edu/products/productivity-tools/
Home page. Retrieved February 25, 2016, from http://community.saugususd.org/dlindsay/page/
Home. Retrieved February 25, 2016, from http://greatdebate2008.wikispaces.com/
Microsoft OneNote | the digital note-taking app for your devices. Retrieved February 25, 2016,
from http://www.onenote.com/
Padlet is the easiest way to create and collaborate in the world. Retrieved February 25, 2016,
from http://www.padlet.com
Reich, J., Murnane, R., & Willett, J. (2012). The State of Wiki Usage in U.S. K12 Schools:
Leveraging Web 2.0 Data Warehouses to Assess Quality and Equity in Online Learning
Environments. Educational Researcher, (1). 7.
Solomon, G. & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0: How to for educators. Eugene, OR: ISTE
The discovery utopias - home. (1984). Retrieved February 25, 2016, from
http://discoveryutopias.wikispaces.com/