When I think of a wiki, I image it to be one great resource for teachers, students, and parents to look at when thinking about a telecollaborative project. Since the telecollaborative project is not something you could just meet up with someone and have coffee and discuss your plan; using a wiki will allows the users to organize and post their thoughts all in one place that can be accessed from anywhere with an Internet connection.
Teachers:
Can assess the students posts and also look at the history to see who and when changes were made. The teacher also has access to update, delete, and manage each pages information. The teacher could also pose questions to each group or students page in the discussion board to give them some type of feedback. The teacher (if so desired) also has the ability to hide particular pages from other users so only Susie could see the Group 1 project, and Billy could only see Group 2.
Students:
If the teacher split the class up to be partnered with someone from the other class, they could assign each group a wikipage to be in charge of. The students would be responsible for digitally communicating with their partner to determine what they would like to accomplish or see for each part of the project. Depending on the student's access to other pages (as set by the teacher) the student could comment on other groups work and give them helpful or insightful hints.
Parents:
The great thing about a wiki is parents (depending on the settings set by the teacher) the parent might only be able to view, or view and make comments. This way the parents can get involved with the telecollaborative projects but not be able to change the work their or other students have done. This way when some students say they have been doing "nothing" in class the parent can verify and have conversations about the project with the student as well.
How to change the settings:
As the teacher you are the Administrator/Creator of your wiki, so you have the ability to set what role you would like to give each student, parent, or other teacher. Here are some steps to help you:
- Log onto the wiki
- Click the users tab (near the top left)
- Find a student, parent, or other teacher name in the list of users
- To the right you have some drop down choices: Administrator (can do anything on the wiki), Editor (has the ability to edit the page and comment), Writer (only has access to write in the discussion board), Reader (can only read the page), and Page-Level Only (allows you to let them be one of the other choices but only for that page not the rest of the website).
- After you have selected a choice it automatically saves and you are done! :)
Below is a screenshot of what the settings page should look like:
