Thing # 8

I very much enjoyed the Common Craft video clip explaining the possibilities of wikis. Then I explored several of the ones on the list and was a little disappointed. Like the 23Thingster, I felt like I was looking at Open House projects, just digitally formatted. The Go West wiki was organized by topics of interest about the journey on the Oregon Trail. But it seemed like each student or group worked on discreet pieces of content and then they put it all together. That may not have been the case, but it appears so when I view the wiki. The Salute to Seuss was a wiki devoted to celebrations of Dr. Seuss' birthday and appeared to have had contributors from different locations around the country, but once again, it seemed an "after the fact" vehicle. The Common Craft video made it so robust and active.I did check out the wiki on Schools of the Past. That one to me seemed more interactive than any of the others I've seen. It looks like people just go in and add their childhood memories about schools, playgrounds, etc. I'm sure it provided some interesting discussion for that class.

In Wiki Wiki Teaching, I did see some possibilities as the teacher described the excitement generated as kids did the assessment piece, and they pieced together reviews for other subjects' tests and quizzes. Most of the wikis I visited seemed to have had teacher identified organization. I saw many different tools being used. I am totally unaware of these and need to do some more checking into them. I was embarrassed by the 3rd graders who know how to do a Power Point and insert it into a wiki along with maps and photographs. One disappointing thing about the wikis I visited was that while the technology outcomes seem to have been successfully met, sometimes I wondered about the content outcomes. The material represented seemed very surface level to me. I think this is one area we'll have to be careful of as we integrate technology. It doesn't need to become technology for technology's sake, but rather used as a tool to deepen knowledge about the topics we are studying.