I have always been interested in how to use a wiki in the classroom. I have attended several workshops on this, but nothing has sunk in yet. So for my final assignment, I will be sharing the Peanut Butter Wiki. www.pbwiki.com
First of all, a wiki is a web page that multiple people can edit. Most people are now familiar with the "wikipedia" in which definitions and descriptions can be added and changed. Some examples of using a wiki for education include the general uses of a class web page and also having assignments that students can work on together. For distance learning, I think this would be very good. I think we had some difficulty in doing group assignments in our course. In a distance learning course each person could be given a piece of an assignment and it could be joined together on a wiki. Members of the group could add their contributions. They could edit each others, and so forth. I think this would be an excellent format.
The Peanut Butter Wiki advertises itself as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich. In fact, it was easy to make and only took a few minutes. They provide a video tour at http://pbwiki.com/tour/pbwiki.html Check it out for more information.
PBWiki is Free, but like most free software, it is limited to 10MGs of space. However, it is a good way to get started and the prices are not high to acquire more space and more features. For just $10 month you can jump to the next level.
Some of the features include point and click editing, audio widgets, chat room, and a calendar.
The features I like are that it can be totally private and available only to those who have the password and I can know who added what to the page. This would be very good in my classroom and also in working with a group of teachers.
PODCAST interview with another teacher sharing information on PBWiki
movie to be added
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3 comments:
Thanks for telling me about PKWiki. I navigated and found their video. A most impressive tool for collaborative work and, most of all reflective writing.
This is really neat. There are so many things that this course has introduced me to, a wiki being one of them! I could definitely see this being used for group work in both traditional classes and online classes.
Dear Sue,
A great introduction to using wikis. I dont think the limit of 10MB will be too much trouble (it is not a blog!!! ), and being free, you can have ten or twenty of them... Naturally since a wiki can be used to collect anonymous feedback course evaluation from the course students, then letting them see, edit, or copy from past year students, other classes, etc should be avoided. I know some pages can be selectively passworded against unpermitted editing, but still not viewing. So I have chosen to give different free wiki sites to each class. 10MB feedback is more than enough, and I have the delete button too in the interests of free-speech etc ;-)
Such free wikis are really quite disposable, they dont allow for "social presence" to come through from anyone especially, so you need not become emotionally involved with a wiki. Wikipedia is over crosslinked in my opinion.
And the hypertextlinks are not differentiated - as they are in del.icio.us >> bolder for higher number of users, links, linkages.
All Best Wishes
Paul
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