Wikis?

January 15, 2008 -
This week I have been thinking about what I wanted to teach for my professional development activity. I've now completed my first semester as a media specialist at LHS and I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable and knowledgeable about the many aspects of the new position. As I contemplate working with the teachers at my school, I remember how difficult it was last semester to get a couple of teachers (who were friends of mine) on board with having the students create an on-line newsletter for the culminating project in a genetics unit. Unfortunately, I was not successful last semester in convincing them that it was worth a try. As a result of that experience, I'm more carfeul now about introducing new technologies to the teachers at my school.

This time I went about it from a different angle. I've never used Wiki pages with students, but I am really interested in trying it out. Unfortunately, I don't feel comfortable using wikis at this point, but I really need to jump in and learn how to effectively incorporate them into teaching units. Maybe you can see my predicament already, I'd like to do my professional development activitiy on using wikis in the classroom, but I need practice! I need an opportunity to learn how to effectively use wikis with students.

So I decided to just be honest about my plan...I went to the English Department meeting this week and told the teachers about my desire to try out a new technology with students. I asked if anyone was interested in working with me to see how we could incorporate wikis into an upcoming unit. I gave the teachers a general description of wiki pages and a few ideas of how they have been frequently used by teachers with students.

To my surprise, I immediately had 2 teachers interested in trying it! They were both eager and also unfamiliar with wikis. So, we began talking about how we could incorporate the new technology into the teachers' next unit (both teachers teach 10th grade english). Now that we had a class of students, teacher, and a unit to work with, I began more in depth research on how we could use wikispaces to allow the students to work collaboratively.

I opened a wikispace page for the teacher to show her how to do it and then we experimented with the page to become familiar with how it all worked. Mrs. C and Mrs. J were both very excited about trying something new. They were the perfect people to pilot the technology. My thought was that the three of us would work together and work out any of the kinks before I go before the faculty for the professional development.

My principal was hesitant at first, but interested to see how it worked. He was uncomfortable with students putting their work on the internet...he said that we definitely needed to create a permission slip that explained everything to the parents before going any further with our plans.