Thing 16

I created a class wiki this past spring. (Many thanks to my technology coach, Amy Markham. She rocks!) My experience with the wiki was one of my favorite in my 14 years of teaching! I started the wiki based on our bird research, but the content quickly grew due to our enthusiasm--mine and the students'. My purpose of the wiki was for the students to have a central place where content could be referenced, researched, and discussed.


I teach second grade and was concerned about security issues as well as the students having too much freedom to edit information on pages. In order to alleviate my concerns, the students were listed as members while I was the organizer and I made the page private (which means you have to be invited to join by the organizer or ask to join). Also, I locked all pages as I created them so the students posted to the Discussion tabs rather than editing information on the pages. There is an e-mail component to wiki. I could not figure out how to disable it, so I told my students it was off limits. (Of course, one of my more technologically with-it students, e-mailed a "Hi!" message to the whole class before I had the talk. Really, my second graders' lack of fear is my inspiration to try new things!) The quality of some of my students' comments was a bit lacking at times, so I will especially work on this with future classes. However, I was very pleased with my students interest and use of our wiki to explore particular content, research, and discussion.


Below are some of the page titles on my class wiki.

• Animal Cams--links to animals in zoos and the wild (very cool)
• Bird Sounds and Videos--links to aid in bird knowledge and research
• Math Practice--links to practice specific skills
• Our Bird Research--slide show of student artwork and recording of their bird research
• Our Chicks--video of our chicks hatching in the incubator
• Poetry Results--poll the students completed about poems
• Poems--students posted poems as well as commented on other students' poems