A start on wikis

Now that I've had a little more time to process the idea of a wiki and experiment a little, I think I finally understand and appreciate the tool they are.  I can definitely see the organizational value of a wiki.  For my own undestanding, I kind of had to think of a wiki as a tree map on it's side.  Or another visual image is a file cabinet with larger categories, then folders within those categories, and papers in the folders.  Once I had a visual image and began to organize my own ideas, I understood the educational value.  What a fantastic tool to allow collaboration.  First of all, for use in a classroom, they make sense because each student would be using/learning the same format.  I think they would be a very useful collaboration tool for other organizational strategies - groups, clubs, etc., but perhaps not everyone would be fully engaged with the collaborative nature of them. In other words, I think it would be a lot of fun, and very practical, for organizing recipes or family history with friends or family, but not all my friends or family would readily embrace learning to use a wiki. So for a classroom, I especially see them as a useful tool for building a collection - whatever that collection is.

For example, in a literature classroom, students could contribute definitions for vocabulary, they could research and contribute to a variety of aspects of the literature being studied - and that's part of the beauty of the wiki - it leaves room for a lot of choice in terms of what direction both the teacher and student want to go.  For example, I am developing http://www.waysmooth.pbworks.com/, a wiki about my Junior Great Books novels.  In one of these, The Door in the Wall, we could study castles, medieval time period, bubonic plague, London...all kinds of different directions.  I have begun making links with Youtube, etc., because it is pretty unlikely that in my situation my students will be actually doing much research and adding it, but I have set it up to demonstrate that potential.   So one strategy would be students providing background research to a novel. 

One thing I like about the wiki as opposed to a website, is the flexibility and ease with which things can be added and changed.  With websites, there is the whole publishing step to go through.  An example of this flexibility, is again on my wiki.  I found a Youtube video on the St. Mary le Bow bells in London.  Then I added a flickr slideshow of pictures of St. Mary le Bow. The opportunity for students to view these two together will have much greater impact than separately. 

So right now I guess I'm having a tendency to still think of my wiki in terms of "my" effort.  I'm still thinking through how I would involve younger students.  I think it would be much easier to engage and involve older students that have more freedom to use the web.  So initially, I think using the wiki would require more "set up" to involve younger students.  Or maybe not, maybe I could have them post any vocab words they're unfamiliar with along with the definition as they come across them in their reading.  That seems a little boring though, and that is precisely what I'm trying to avoid.  Obviously this will take some more thought, but it's a start.