Matthew Mikos - Blog #4

I went to www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/ and took the wiki walk through.  This was an

informative site that informed me more about what a wiki can be used for in the K - 12 classroom.  It

told me that a wiki is a website that lets any visitor become a participant, anyone can edit, its always

under revision, and it is a living collaboration with the purpose of sharing the creative process and

product of many people.  In class we used wiki's as a way to share informative websites that we had

found useful and necessary for us in the teaching world.  It worked well as we quickly had access to

a large number of websites.  Wikis are being used by K - 12 educators to conduct or follow up on

professional development workshops or as a communication tool with parents.

The greatest potential use for a wiki lies in student participation in the on going creation and 

evolution of the process or product.  The difference between a blog and a wiki is that a blog serves 

more as a space for individual opinions that are untouched.  A wiki allows others to change what one

person has written.  

Some uses in K - 12 education are study guides made by students, vocabulary lists contributed by 

students, organizational and intellectual epicenters for classrooms, products of research projects 

(collaborative group projects), annotated collections of examples (like our resource wiki), "what I 

think is best on the test" wiki - students add throughout the year, travelogues, and information for 

students who miss school.  For younger students, wikis can be used for annotated virtual libraries, 

collaborative book reviews or author studies, elementary class encyclopedias, Family Twaditionwikis 

and Where's Wanda wiki's (Like Flat Stanley)

Wikis can be used for connections that build greater new and old knowledge.  Wikis can build on the 

Best of Bloom's Taxonomy for students as well.  Students can learn new ways of thinking and 

interacting with fellow students.  Wikis can build creative skills, especially, elaboration and fluency, 

flexibility in accepting other's edits, encouraging hitch hiking on ideas, and they introduce and 

reinforce the idea that a creative process is never "done".  Wikis can increase students' engagement, 

their responsiveness can change and improve, and culminating projects never have to end.  Wikis 

help students develop interpersonal and communication skills, especially with consensus building and

compromise.  

The Wiki walk through also helped in guiding teachers on what to do before or as they make a Wiki

for their classroom.  It tells teachers to ask how you first envision the wiki, who will be able to see the 

Wiki, the specifications for the Wiki, like number of people, and publicity, and it advises you to get 

your administrator opinion.  Teachers using Wikis need to be sure that it is permissible to post student 

work on the web.  Wikis are great tools that can link the students and the parents to the classroom.  

They will add an element of technology to the classroom and keep the students interested in the 

on going subject matter.  Wikis will allow for an interaction between students and a passage into the 

classroom for parents who can monitor the learning environment of their children.