Thing 21

Before completing Thing 21, I must admit that I was pretty "anti-wiki"...mostly because my experience with them has been with students trying to use wikipedia for their number one source for information during research (simply because it always seems to come first in a Google search I believe). Granted, there is much good information there, unfortunately we have encountered quite a bit of incorrect information too.

But looking at wikis in a different light, using my students as the authors, suddenly gives wikis much more appeal. I took a lot of time to browse through the list of wikis listed on Web 2.0 Thing 21's post. I enjoyed seeing two hemispheres of students come together on a wiki to share their findings about weather and seasons. Very cool!

I also found the wikiHow (largest how-to-manual) to be a pretty cool idea. I thought that this might be a great idea for my students. I could require every student to add a "How To" to our own Computer Education wiki. They would have to provide step by step instruction and commentary on one computer related skill/activity. I really like this idea.

Looking at other examples of Educational Wikis, I came across a wiki from a Pennsylvania school that had some really cool ideas on using technology with kids (similar to what I have learned in this workshop) and lots of great examples, videos, and help links. I came across another great wiki that a class was doing using video, audio, illustrator to do some awesome projects. I bookmarked a load of items while searching these wikis. I found so many useful things!

Finally, I even set up my own wiki for my class that I am going to test out. It was from PBworks.com. I cannot wait to get to work experimenting with it. I have truly enjoyed Thing 21. I have benefitted tremendously from what I've just learned and seen here.