Thing #7 - Wikis

So this was really my first experience with Wikis. I have been interested in them, but a little scare of how they would work in my classroom. However, after reading Vicki Davis' blog, Wiki Wiki Teaching, it helped me to see all the possibilities there are out there in the wiki world! One of my favorite parts of her blog was where she was describing the students' excitement of creating the wiki and using it! I can't remember there ever being a time where I was so excited to go to a class in high school. It's amazing to see high school students so excited about something and learning at the same time! This blog was really inspiring and even though I don't teach high school, it got me thinking of ways I can use a wiki in my classroom. I know how excited my students get over Voki, Xtra Normal, and movies we make as a class! So I'm sure they would love being a part of creating a wiki.
Most of the Wiki's I chose to check out were ones created by elementary school students, so I could get some ideas of how I could use a Wiki in my classroom, and I definitely got some great ideas! The first one I looked at was Kindergarten Counting Book. I was really curious how a wiki was used in a Kindergarten classroom! On this site, they took pictures of a certain number of items until they got to 100 items. I thought this was a big undertaking, and it looks like it might have been, since there are some numbers without pictures. However, it could still be in progress. I think this is a great starting point to building wikis. If i would changed anything, it would have more student involvement, meaning maybe have a student write the number they created and maybe a sentence using that number (depending on how far into the year, of course). I would maybe even allow future classes to build on, and add their number items so there are more than one picture of 1 item. I felt as though this had a lot of teacher work, and I would have like to see more of what the Kindergartners could do with numbers!

A really great wiki that I saw was Mrs. Kubler's 4th Grade Reading Group. I loved going through the discussions on this Wiki! It was so great to read the students' questions about what they think will happen next in the story, making predictions! What I really liked about this wiki is that it was for a reading group, so it makes it more intimate and special foe those students in the reading group. I think having a wiki for a small group like that helps shyer students feel more comfortable expressing themselves and their opinions freely! I also thought this was a great tool for the kids reading the book because it has the Word Wizard which is a resource for the readers to find meanings of words they may come across in the book. It also has a section for the students to summarize what they read, called Wrapper Upper. Summarizing is a great comprehension skill, and this wiki made it fun! I don't think there is much I would change on this wiki, I think this is a great example of how a wiki can be used to make learning fun!
Since Dr. Seuss has a birthday coming up (March 2nd), I had to see what the Salute to Seuss wiki was all about! This was pretty amazing! There were pages added from classes all over the country and from other Countries (New Zealand)! There's a place for teachers to upload pictures of their Dr. Seuss celebrations and activities. There is also a page where teachers could find worksheets to go along with Dr. Seuss books. There were also book reviews where the students (with the aide of their teacher) can write a review of a Dr. Seuss book. What I would change about this wiki, is to make it more available to other teachers. It looks like only the creator of this wiki was able to add and make changes to the information on the wiki. To make it a true collaboration, I think she should have made it open to other teachers to add their activities, worksheets or book reviews. I think that would make this wiki a "go to" place for teachers looking for Dr. Seuss related activities.
Looking at all the wikis really got my mind going with ideas for my classroom. The first thing I thought of doing was creating a wiki on all the Historical Americans we learn about in First Grade. There are 6 different Americans the students learn about and I thought it would be great if we could create a page on the wiki for each historical American. The students could create items (drawings, writings, etc....) to go under each historical American they learn about, that way, at the end of the year, they have a great collection on these Americans! I also like the idea of having a book discussion on a wiki, in First Grade, many of the books we read are picture books, but we could do an Author Study, and create a wiki where were read, review, and create activities for that particular author, like Kevin Henkes. There are lots of ideas for using wikis in the classroom. I can't wait to begin mine!!