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Wiki’s and their possible uses by teachers & students

Wiki’s and their possible uses by teachers & students . WMCI November 26, 2010. Presented by Chris Samels Sponsored by Cadbury and Tim Horton’s. Wiki What?. Wiki is: The simplest online database that could possibly work.

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Wiki’s and their possible uses by teachers & students

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  1. Wiki’s and their possible uses by teachers & students WMCI November 26, 2010 Presented by Chris Samels Sponsored by Cadbury and Tim Horton’s

  2. Wiki What? • Wiki is: • The simplest online database that could possibly work. • Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple format for creating new pages. • Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself. “Open editing" has profound effects on Wiki usage. It allows users to create and edit any page in a Web site and it encourages democratic use of the Web by nontechnical users.

  3. What Is a Wiki (and How to Use One for Your Projects) • Try to imagine a classroom where the entire group is writing a story/working on math problems/planning an experiment (you get the idea) together. • All the members of the group are anxious to get their ideas recorded, but the secretary can only write so fast… • In comes the wiki! • By making an online source for recording their ideas, the groups mentioned can all record, edit and refine their ideas simultaneously while reading the work of the others!

  4. How does this work? • An easily found example is Wikipedia, aka the open source encyclopedia. • By allowing simple linking and low barrier to entry, many people can be involved in editing and authoring. • We can use these qualities with small groups (3 or 4), can engage the entire class (or school) or can simply have a wiki presenting the ideas of an individual. Here’s how it works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

  5. Choosing a Wiki Prime elements of a wiki should include: • Ease of installation and use • User accounts • Page history and stored revisions • Document attachments • Page edit locking (so others don’t change your work)

  6. Wiki’s for Teachers Only GOOD • For posting notes, readings, assignments, course outlines, etc. • For providing links to study sites, enrichment • Kids like the technology NOT AS GOOD • Some students may avoid note-taking in class saying “I’ll get it off the wiki” • Time involved posting material and keeping wiki up to date

  7. How to Manage a Wiki • After the initial creation of a wiki and informing your students about what types of material will be made available to them, a time commitment needs to be made to maintain the wiki. Time needed will vary based on: • Your current comfort level of working with (basic) technology. • How much of your material is already in word/pdf/powerpoint format. • Willingness to take some risks.

  8. How to Get Started Wikispaces.com • Wikispaces.com is free for teachers and is (relatively) easy to use. • Open up wikispaces.com in your browser and follow the instructions given by the website for the initial creation. • Various themes, additions to the wiki, etc. are done mostly with the edit button and associated tool bar. • These additions will be covered in the upcoming tutorial!

  9. Helpful Items • While you can simply start a wiki from scratch, it is much easier if you already have some materials on the computer. • Due to some software issues, you might wish to convert Word files to pdf. format. • Items that you might want to stockpile on your computer before getting too involved in your wiki: PDF files (assignments, readings, etc.) Clip art and gifs. (thematic or seasonal)

  10. Easy Stuff – it won’t make you nervous trying this: • It’s easy to: • Add pdf’s • Add word files • Insert clip art and gif’s • Add new pages • Change your theme

  11. Medium Level Items • Resizing pictures using Photoshop (the easiest way is to beg for help from a tech. teacher…) Imbedding video/audio files (don’t forget copy - right laws!) Remembering to keep the wiki up-to-date

  12. The willpower to wiki • Likely the most difficult part of making and maintaining a wiki is setting aside the time to do so. After the initial creation and reorganization, I have found that 30 minutes a week is ample, but results will vary. Some have more time (or will power) than others: I’ll have a chocolate bar for each staff with a wiki by the end of next week!

  13. Resources • http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki • http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2006/07/07/what-is-a-wiki.html • http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers • http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/ • http://www.freesmileys.org/ • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

  14. Happy Friday! Good luck with your wiki! Feel free to email me with questions – I’ll try to help.

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