I glanced over several of the wiki links provided and then looked closer at a few of them. I do like the concept. I believe there are a lot of benefits to using a wiki with a classroom. It would be possible to collaborate on group projects, help each other find useful links, help each other understand difficult assignments and give general information to the class. The troubles I have with wikis are similar to other things we have covered. Just like the RSS feeds, if you don't check it, you don't see it. My students had an opportunity to use a website that isn't quite a wiki but a place where all the information they needed was stored. (Moodle) I found that unless their grade depended upon them visiting the site, they did not. There were some exceptions but for the most part it was an unused resource. I noticed that several of the wikis that were linked were outdated, some haven't been updated since 2007. The best practices for teachers wiki was last updated in May of 2009, of course this could be due to summer vacation.
For the last several years for my statistics class we gather some data from my students. I ask them the number of TV's and number of computers they have in their house. Last year was the first year that all students had at least one computer in their house. This is probably not true for many teachers and districts around the nation. But my class should be able to make good use of the computer to enhance our learning. However, even given that they had the access, most of my students still didn't use it. The next thing I will have to learn is how to encourage them to use what we have available.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment