Wikis+in+Teaching+and+Learning+-+Spring,+Viterbo+Course

= **How do you think wikis will change teaching and learning? Or** DO **you think they will? What do you see as their potential to change the way teachers and students read, write and collaborate?** =

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 * Suggestion:** Why don't we each pick a font color (style, too, if you want) so that it will be more visually friendly and easier to see at a glance the thoughts of each person? How do you feel about including a photo of yourself? The next best thing to meeting in person. I will start us off - unfortunately a Christmas picture. I wish those were Spring flowers in the background and foreground.======

**Emmy**: Gail, the step by step directions for inserting an image are on Page 5 and following of my guided hands-on document, **Directions for Creating a Wki**. It is in the Course Documents section of BlackBoard; the actual file is called, **"Wikispaces 2: join and ceate your own wiki**. Let me know if you need further help.

Namaste, Brian & Pari

Brian - In the next few years, teachers, new and old, are going to be challenged to alter their approached to teaching. 21th Century school reform invisions preparing students for a rapidly changing society. Workskills are going to emphasize communication skills, ability to work in teams and with people from different cultures. It will therefore be essential to teach students to collaborate, solve problems in groups, interact with people of different cultures, and to apply what they learn to real world problems. This will not come from a textbook. Edcuation reformers like the Gates Foundation and Willard Daggett's, International Center for Leadership in Education, advocate for teaching strategies like project-based learning and the development of critical thinking and problem solving skills. As Jessica brings out below teachers will have to depart from being dispensers of information to facilitators of education. With PBL teachers facilitate projects that are collaborative, relevant, and lead to real world solutions. Finished projects are presented to an audience larger than the teacher. The students' work therefore has a larger purpose than just pleasing the teacher or to get a good grade. Jessica also write about this point well, in that using wikis in collabortive ways increases "audience". The difficulties are: will educator be able to keep up and will school funding be available for professional training and to implement innovation. Forward thinking districts and teachers will research educational literature and seek out professional development that will help them adapt teaching methods to meet the needs of students. The use of wikis as a colloborative tool seems to be a natural fit for innovative teaching strategies such as PBL. Collabortive use of wikis promotes communication skills, presents opportunities to interact with people from other locals and cultures and gives students chances to solve problems in groups and promotes critical thinking. Jessica: I would like to think that wikis will change teaching and learning for the better in every classroom, but that is only if all educators begin to use them. Realistically, I believe some will use them and some won’t. For those that do start to use them, I feel that wikis will open the door to more student centered learning. When a student has the ability to reflect, discuss and collaborate with others using a media that they are comfortable with, they are more likely to be engaged in their own learning. I believe they will put in more effort. In terms of writing and collaborating, wikis create a sense of an audience. Students are not producing just for themselves but for all the members of the wiki and possibly thousands of other people. It will change the way a student thinks about his/her work and who they are trying to reach or impress. In terms of collaboration, students using a wiki can get feedback from numerous sources and not just their teacher or their peers. With the possibility of a more critical audience, students may be forced to collaborate more with their classmates, other members of the wiki or even others out in cyberspace. This collaboration, sharing of ideas and using each other as a sounding board, could be the key to an amazing final product. I also think that using wikis in teaching and learning will open the door to students possibly using wikis in their own lives and contributing to online communities that interest them. I really like the idea that we as teachers are facilitators and that by opening some doors for our students, they will learn and grow more on their own than by only taking in the information that we give them. They need to make their own connections in the world and find their own teachers. In one of our readings it was stated that the teachers our students find on their own will be more influential than the ones they are given. We can help them find those teachers by preparing them for the changing world that we are in. Using wikis to collaborate, discuss, research, write, organize and present is only the beginning.

===**Gail:** I really love the idea of using Wikis, but don't think my school is quite there yet as far as making them collaborative (the usual worries about security and confidentiality as well as appropriateness of postings.) But I certainly see the potential for all students and teachers to be able to contribute to each others' learning ... yes, the teachers need to learn from the students too! I agree with Jessica and Brian about the sense of "audience" that comes with the Wiki; hopefully that also brings a sense of responsibility and authenticity to the interactions. I am eager to get some collaboration going on mine to see how this will work in the real world of my school. I plan to use my 8th graders as the "guinea pigs" and have them use a page for responding to current events and moments in history. We'll see what happens! ===

===I think Wikis can change the way we teach by virtue of the fact that the teacher can be more accessible, and there can be almost immediate response and feedback. In turn, this can change the way students learn -- they will have an opportunity for continued revisions, research links literally at their fingertips, multimedia resources, and a sense of contributing to a community. That can all be very empowering and promote critical thinking. ===

===In addition to using the Wiki as a web page or online gallery for exhibiting student work I would love to see my school use Wikis across the curriculum -- reading response journals, writing workshops, group projects, research collaboration, book discussions, even math journaling are all possibilities. There will certainly be a learning curve and it will require some shift in energy, attitude and teaching style by some teachers (and I expect some may not be on board at all) but I am hopeful we can start to put this idea to good use. I plan to ask my principal if I can run an in-service on this next year too :-) ===

Janet: I do believe that Wikis, along with other Web 2.0 skills will make an impact on teaching and learning. Our students need to utilize the skills that will enable them to compete in a global economy. Wikis and other collaborative communication tools will assist in the development of critical 21st Century Skills. The traditional lecture-oriented classroom model is rapidly being replaced by techniques better suited to an ever-changing, technology-based world.

I agree with Jessica that students enjoy writing when they have a sense of purpose and an authentic audience. As she mentions, this lends itself to more student-centered learning. This is why I am so excited about our project-based learning charter school. Although project-based learning is not exactly new - John Dewey spoke about it over 60 years ago; project-based learning involves the students as active learners, rather than passive listeners. Project-based learning fosters critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, creativity and innovation. I believe that wikis will be important tools to to achieve those skills. The wiki can be easily used and manipulated by students and teachers to share ideas, collaborate on projects, and facilitate learning.

As Gail mentions, teachers will need to shift their thinking and learn some new technology. As many of us discussed, it is often difficult to find the time and resources to train teachers in these new techniques. School districts and administrators will have to make this training a key component in their professional development inservices and provide incentives to teachers to incorporate these techniques. Online courses, such as this one, help in this goal, by providing opportunities for working teachers to learn from home on their own schedule. I'm looking forward to using the wiki I created, as well as others in the future. I've enjoyed hearing what others are doing and learning more about the potential for this collaborative communication tool.

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AMY: Yesterday I posted my picture to this wiki along with my paragraph....This morning it is no longer on here...does or did anybody else see it on here? Well...when I looked at the history...it looked like when Brian added text, mine was deleted. So...I will try this process again. I would agree with Jessica, I would hope that wikis will change the teaching world and learning environment. When looking at collaborating with teachers, there will always be some teachers who are new to the idea and some teacher who are set in their ways. That is probably going to be the biggest down fall using a wiki for collaborating with fellow teachers. I think students will feel like they have control over their learning, because when they feel they have a question or comment they can share it and find someone else who may be dealing with that exact same issue or concern. They will then know that they aren not left out or feel like they don't know the material. It will be interesting to see how long our school will take to implement a new concept likea wiki into the daily routines of our school.

I did share the link we had about the school who uses it as a check in system and for the school annoucements. I would like to see our school move in that direction. Like our own wikis, start small and then move on to bigger and better wikis when all feel comfortable using them.

===I'm glad you mentioned using the Wiki as a kind of check-in system - that would be a great use for the Wiki I think. In a classroom situation, you could have students do a "Daily 5" or other warm-up activity on a Wiki as a way of checking in. Or even use it in conjunction with a morning meeting, current events, Show & Tell or just to say what's on their mind that day, how they are feeling. All wonderful possibilities, but as you mention, start small and move on to bigger things. ===

===By the way, I added a survey to my Wiki today! I used Survey Monkey (free basic membership) and put it on my library page. It was a lot of fun to create it and figure out how to make it work. ===

 Tim: Wikis have the ability to drastically change the way that I currently teach and my students consume information. Currently, I attempt to engage my students in as much discussion as possible because I feel this is truly the best way to get students to apply the knowledge they are being provided. I definitely do not want to lose this aspect of my classroom, but I do realize that Wikis are going to open the door for the more reluctant contributors to have a voice. This will ultimately allow more students to interact with one another and provide me with a better understanding of the students' comprehension of our course materials. As our district moves to 1 to 1 computing, I believe that the utilization of a wiki will make my life so much easier because I will now be able to house all course materials in one easily accessible place, leaving no student with the excuse that he/she has lost the previous day's materials or was not present for discussion material. As learners, students are going to become more empowered because of their increased ability to collaborate with peers and as has been mentioned by pretty much everyone, they are going to take a greater sense of ownership in their work because they will know that their words, ideas, and projects will be published for the world to see. After only three weeks of being introduced to and working with wikis I can already see how they will change the way my students will read, write, and collaborate. Students will be exposed to a much greater variety of readings and will be provided with more freedom in their personal selection of reading material. This will hopefully renew the fire in most students for reading, which seems to diminish as students age. Writing will be enhanced because students will have access to a wider variety of models of good writing and they will be able to collaborate using programs like Google docs to receive immediate feedback, thus giving them a greater sense of understanding for the ways that they are able to affect their audience. I look forward to the evolution of technology because of tools like wikis and I am anxious to develop ideas and activities that will engage my students in ways that I would have never imagined to be possible. Thank you to all of you for your feedback on my wiki; it will be a work in progress that hopefully will one day help my English students become more engaged and enriched as learners.

Brian - I am not sure what happened to your picture and post, Amy. I know that is frustrating because I had my initial class posting deleted. I think part of the issue was that we may have been on the wiki at the same time. There was a pop-up that came up stating you were editing the page also. Like you say, maybe when I saved my post, it deleted your. I apologize if it was something I did. Janet, I posted on my wiki page some funding sources that you might find useful in planning for your charter school. I created this list when our district did their strategic planning with the idea they might help us in our green activities.

Janet: Thanks Brian for the funding ideas. Although we have charter funds right now, that won't last. We need to find a way to fund the projects and technology once the charter funds are gone. I appreciate your suggestions.