Thing #8

Wiki Wiki Teaching was empowering. I really felt excited as I read through the post. Vicki Davis's wiki, Westwood Schools Computer Science, was even more enlightening. The things she has the students doing on the wiki are phenomenal. She is definitely a "guru" when it comes to using the web as an educational tool. I'm not sure I'm ready to introduce blogging and wikis to my resource math class, but I can definitely see a professional wiki my future.

We have 11 math teachers on our campus and we all have a cache of math tools. I would love to create a wiki where we could deposit that wealth of information to use as a web library. I can envision a navigator on the side broken up into math objectives and each objective broken into areas for videos, Promethian slates, interesting papers with a new twist on teaching an objective, etc. It would take the first year to load all the information we have in our separate caches, but the following year we could benefit greatly. I see an important advantage for new teachers. One place to look to enrich their lessons. So much time is spent that first year just trying to find everything you need.

One of the best wikis on the list was the Room 15 Wiki. I am in awe of the quality of work he is getting from 4th graders. He must have them do most of their work on a computer. Their use of computer tools was great and I even noticed their spelling and grammar were great.

Math 12V Outcomes was another great wiki but not as surprising as the 4th grade class. This was a 12th grade Advanced Math class that totally outlined the course into their wiki for everyone to access. I'm sure the teacher taught, but the students did the reteach by dividing the sections among themselves and providing notes, instructions, and any other relevant tools necessary for mastery.

All in all, I think I like wikis more than blogs.