Wikis in Telecollaborative Projects: How 2.0

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:

Discussions on Wikis: How 2.0

After my last post about how to incorporate discussions into wikis I have done some research and found some good "starter" websites to see how they incorporate discussions.

The first place I searched was on the Pbworks support site and found this video which I thought really explained the intended use for a wiki. This site is also the main support center for pbworks. It describes how instead of items getting lost in an inbox on your email, you have a place where a collaborative group can write out their thoughts and edit or add ideas to the discussion. This site also gives links to different "how to" documents or videos.

Jen Wagner has created a great tutorial which walks a new user through how to set up, edit, add links to pages, "extras", adding new pages, some quick guides, and how to change user and other settings.

Another video describes some features not many people realize pbworks is capable of: how to search topics and create a table of contents. It gives a step by step overview of how pbworks allows you to search through the wiki for specific topics you would like to find quickly.

Probably the most helpful site gave some good wiki examples. It showed current wikis and how they are being incorporated into the classroom or into trainings for educators. Some of the more helpful one's I stumbled upon from the previous site (not only for discussion boards but also for web 2.0 FAQ):

• http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/ (great website for Web 2.0 tools)


• http://healigan.wikispaces.com/message/view/home/15665196 (these are discussions on poems)


• http://model-bfwilson.wikispaces.com/message/view/home/8136797 (discussion on biweekly reading)

• http://crowdsourcingexamples.pbworks.com/ (this just had some good discussion or ways that people gave their thoughts about the topic at hand)

The last helpful site I found had some great grading rubrics for when you had discussions or collaborative groups make a wiki page of information. (check out pages 3-5 for the rubrics)

-Laurie

Wikis- How 2.0

This year my school had given all the teachers a week long opportunity to attend a Web 2.0 training (we are a STEM academy, so it is required that we use technology as much as we can). The training was offered the first week of summer the previous school year, during the training there were multiple different sessions teachers used to get a closer look about how to use different web 2.0 tools. One of the tools most of the departments focused on were using Wikis. In BCPS we are asked to use http://pbworks.com/ because this is the "education" wikispace; but some other free blogging or website sites are: Wikispaces, Wetpaint, Edublogs, Stixy, or Kidblog.

A wiki is a website where teachers, students, and parents can have a discussion about different topics posed by the teacher, student, or parents. The teacher can also post documents, pictures, or links to websites to provide to the person on the other end.

Unfortunately this year most of our teachers have not been using the wiki as a wiki but more so as a website to get the information out there. In one of our classes (ET 680) we talked about the levels of use for technology: Level 0- Non use, Level 1- Orientation, Level 2- Preparation, Level 3- Mechanical, Level 4A- Routine, Level 4B- Refinement, Level 5- Integration, and Level 6- Renewal. I think that most of my colleagues (myself included) are around a Level 4, we are comfortable using the wiki by uploading files, pictures, and put links into our wiki however we just need to get to that point where we use its full capabilities.

Here are some of our teacher/class wikis (used with permission from the teachers, also I am not sure of their security on their site so you may not be able to see it without emailing them to be granted access):
https://justicechsmath.pbworks.com/
http://parlettemath.pbworks.com/
https://nortonsh.pbworks.com/
https://mrfieldmath.pbworks.com/
http://mtsthelensvlemathchallenge2.pbworks.com/














When others have made discussions, do you make them from a whole new page in wiki? I don't know how you could ask different questions all from the same page. This is part of the reason I personally don't know how I can make different discussions go on all in the same site because we were just taught the basics of uploading files, pictures, and putting links on the wiki.

Does anyone have any other suggestions, ideas, or best practices they know about on how to get teachers started on making their wiki more like a wiki and not just a website?

-Laurie