5 Ways You Can Use Wikis

Today I had the privilege to participate in Discovery's Beyond the Textbook forum. One of my take-aways from the day's conversation is that most of the technologies that we want to use to make textbooks interactive and meaningful for students already exist, we just need to organize and utilize them in a way that makes sense for teachers and students. I've combined that take-away with a recent request from a reader to delineate some ways that teachers can use Wikispaces to create this list of ideas for using wikis in classrooms. Please feel free to add your suggestions, with links if possible, in the comments below (please note, I'll be on planes for the next 18 hours so there will be a delay between your comment submission and its appearance on the blog).

1. As a digital portfolio of student-created videos.

2. As a place for students to share notes on each unit of study in your courses.

3. As an alternative to textbooks. Work with colleagues in your school or department to create a multimedia reference site for your students. Include YouTube videos that use the "choose your own adventure" model to allow students to pursue areas of interest.

4. As an alternative to textbooks. Have students create reference pages for units of study in your course. When you do this students become responsible to each other for creating accurate and meaningful content that they can refer to when it comes time for assessment. For example, when I get to the 1920's in my US History curriculum I have each student create a page on a wiki about a theme from that decade. Some of the themes that the students cover are fashion, entertainment, and sports. I mentioned this briefly on a podcast that will be published soon by Steve Dembo and Dean Shareski.

5. As a place to track, document, and manage on-going community projects. In my district every student is required to complete a community service project before graduation. As a homeroom or "common block" advisor teachers are supposed to help their students take the necessary steps to document that work. By creating a homeroom wiki you create a place where students can make weekly updates about what they have done to complete their projects.

How are you using wikis in your classroom? Please leave a comment below. 

If you're not quite sure what a wiki is or what makes it different from a traditional website or blog, watch Wikis in Plain English from Common Craft.

Schedule Project Due Dates in Wikispaces

If you assign wiki editing due dates to your students' wiki projects, Wikispaces has just launched a new feature just for you. Events is a Wikispaces feature that allows you to schedule due dates for Wikispaces Projects. When you schedule a Wikispaces Event you can specify a lock time for your project. Once that lock time is reached no one is able to make any further edits to that page. Watch the short video below to learn more about Wikispaces Events.



Applications for Education
Wikispaces Events doesn't change the way that students use Wikispaces, but it does make it easier for you to manage your students' work in Wikispaces.

Almost Everything You Need to Know About Wikispaces

If there is such a thing as an "old reliable" resource in the world of ed tech, Wikispaces qualifies. I've been using Wikispaces for various purposes and recommending it to others since I started this blog. Over the years I've created screencast videos about how to use it, created slideshows about how to use it, and linked to other educators' tutorials on it. But until very recently, Wikispaces didn't have its own YouTube Channel dedicated to showing you how to use the features they offer.

The Wikispaces YouTube channel contains 25 screencast videos created by Wikispaces to show you how to utilize some of their useful features. Below I've embedded their introductory video and their video on creating an educational wiki.





Learn more about the new Wikispaces YouTube channel on the Wikispaces Blog.

New Drag and Drop File Uploads in Wikispaces

The popular wiki-building service Wikispaces recently made an handy enhancement to their user interface. The new feature is the option to upload files by simply dragging them from your desktop to the wiki you're working on. I've included two screenshots of the process below.

Step 1.

Step 2.

Applications for Education
The addition of drag and drop uploads doesn't revolutionize the way that you and your students create wikis or what you do with them, but it is still a helpful little enhancement.

If you're looking for ideas about assessing student use of wikis, check out these rubrics from the University of Wisconsin.