The NETS-S Standards include collaboration and shared creation of work. Wikis are designed to make it easy for several authors to collaborate on the same document. I explored Wikis in several ways, including: adding content to Wikipedia, and the class PBWorks sites, creating a Wiki and using it for my classroom, and using a Wiki to plan an edcamp.
For the Wikipedia task, I decided to look up my family’s neighborhood in Israel. I found an article on Karnei Shomron, but the editor stated that this community was in violation of international law. I went into the “Talk” tab, and there was a Warning: Active Arbitration Remedies. There were guidelines for any editing changes, and statements that this article was within the scope of WikiProject Palestine and WikiProject Israel. There was an invitation to work with one of these groups to join the discussion. There was an additional tab with a list of suggested tasks that people could do. Since I am not thoroughly informed about the geopolitics of the area, I decided to add a photo. I found a section that said that Wikipedia was looking for pictures of the airport, particularly the El Al offices. I didn’t have a picture of the offices. I wouldn’t have wanted to expose the offices to security risk, so I just added a picture of the entrance hall to the main floor. After that, I looked at learning standards. There was no reference to 21st century learning standards, so I added a link to Partnership for 21st Century Skills.
It was simple to create an account on Wikispaces and PBWorks. Although it took me a few minutes to find the “History” link on the PBWorks, I did find it, and added my Web 2.0 recommendation.
I experimented with Wikispaces with my students this year. It sounded like a great way to encourage them to access my instructions, post their work, and reflect on each others’ work. Although we did utilize the shared space to access my instructions, it wasn’t easy for the students to find their way around the pages. In addition, we were having difficulty with social interactions face to face, and this was carrying over to the virtual classroom as well.
Recently, I started planning an edcamp for this coming September. The edcamp movement has a shared Wikispace for users to plan together. This is a great way to collaborate and plan together. Here is a link to my edcamp Wikispace: http://edcamp.wikispaces.com/JEDCampLA.
I would like to revisit our classroom Wikispace as we develop greater collaborative skills in my classroom. Perhaps it will help the students to start with their own blogs, and sharing comments and reviews of each others’ work. Then we can move back to our classroom Wiki and simultaneously create some project together. An alternative approach might be to use a shared Google doc. If we had GAFE, the students would be able to log into their own accounts and then share one doc rather than having to access an additional site. This might be an easier way to create shared content.
Overall, there are advantages and disadvantages to Wikis vs. Blogs. Wikis are a simple solution for sharing plans for a project. Blogs are a better looking and easier to navigate option for posting content that has only one or two authors. Wikipedia is a huge undertaking with almost unlimited articles. Controversial topics such as the Israeli Arab situation is under arbitration and constant review. There is an opportunity for students of political science to study and contribute well researched content to this topic. This means that any high school, college, or educated person could make a meaningful contribution to help clarify controversial issues for the general community. While it is not simple to include multiple authors to create a shared product, providing guidelines like Wikipedia's can result in a useful resource.
