Media Mavens

“However, I was not going be daunted so easily; therefore, I began gathering information to prove my point to the powers that be.” I admire your tenacity, Theresa!

Though I have been in education a long time, I am relatively new to the use of wikis. I have certainly looked at many of these and wondered how I could use this special collaboration strategy at my school. Administrators will say, “We have a web site. This is a great tool for communication.” Yes, we have the web site and it is great for the part it has in communication with our individual homerooms, but the site is hardly interactive in the truest sense. Teachers post their own web pages with assignments or classroom news pertinent to their students and parents there, but the interaction with OTHER teachers is nonexistent due to the nature of the site. Teachers need the capability to connect and to share thoughts that is just not available on most school web sites.

Theresa, maybe this could help you and me in talking to administration or Central Office personnel about the use of educational wikis. Wikis seem the obvious choice for specialized contact. As the old saying goes, “Two heads are better than one.” REAL interactions that allow give and take are specialties of the wiki. Since the wiki is a natural way to communicate and collaborate, the wiki seems a likely option to let teachers work together as professionals for the best outcomes and experiences for the students. In education, we talk the talk about collaboration and its many benefits, but sometimes walking that talk is more difficult on a daily basis. Yes, the idea that teachers should be talking to other teachers is what we want and should be doing. The truth is, teachers just don’t have the time during a busy school day to do in-depth discussion with each other about issues, thoughts, inspirations, or expectations. All those great ideas get short shrift during the typical school day. At the end of the day, ANOTHER face to face meeting in the media center just doesn’t have much appeal. (My brainstorming energy is brain-dead!) If, instead, teachers could post ideas online at home or at other places and times when they are rested, refreshed, or energized about a particular idea, participation with each other could grow by leaps and bounds. Teachers could collaborate on area level projects or in vertical discussions on concerns they might have about implementing the Georgia Performance Standards. With wikis we could work with each other on school-wide programs to encourage reading, drug awareness, or safety issues. As thoughts occur, teachers could get online and share them. Additions to any project, plan, or discussion would be just a click away!

I believe that once administrators or Central Office personnel are shown the merits of the wiki world, our case makes itself. Copies of the resources you have listed might be discussed in a congenial one-on-one session with the principal. Since wikis are still often blocked by Internet filters, screenshots of existing educational wikis might help with administrators’ understanding of the place wikis can have in the life of the school. Good luck to all of us in this exciting wiki enterprise!

I like the way you presented your information here. It's very engaging.

You say, "When ideas are shared publicly, peer groups are able to critique and offer alternative explanations." I mentioned this as a response to another blogger, but I wanted to bring it up here, too, because you speak directly to the issue. First of all, I agree with you on this statement. I wonder, though, about what happens when the contributions that are made to the wiki are not in keeping with the purpose that the originator had. In other words, how do you tell contributors to stop messing up the wiki? I noticed that the developers of Georgia Media Listserv have recently posted a wiki and are encouraging contributions. What if the contributions that are posted are not in keeping with what the developers had hoped for the site? I guess that's the advantage of a webpage with a comment or suggestion box. The developer can give them a thumbs up or down and choose to change the site if he/she wants to. Not so with the wiki, right?

I typed a response but lost it. Oh well. I would say you could censor them and edit your wiki back to have it just as you like it which may create hard feelings, make you go crazy, and defeat the purpose of open-source collaboration, or you could just ignore it unless it was a problem, then contact the person and ask them to edit their posts if they continued down the wrong track. I think with Wikipedia, at least, there is an unspoken rule about contributing relevant content, and hopefully those who say something will fully understand the subject of the wiki. Another way to weed out fluff and have more control is to set the permissions to allow only members to post content and edit pages, which is more selective. Public is the most "open" option. I think over at Wikipedia, they have people watching things too because when anyone dies, they lock the site, e.g. Michael Jackson. They didn't want just anyone posting erroneous information, and a message popped up saying it was locked and that there may be some discrepancies. I do not favor being big brother, but I think it's up to the owner of the wiki. On some boards, blogs, and social networking sites (not wikis that I know of), you have to approve comments and content before they show up. That can be time consuming. Believe me, I have been an administrator for various forums a long time ago.

In the spirit of collaboration, it'd be open and the person contacted and nicely asked to fix their content or told that it can be fixed for them, but that's just my opinion.

I love your enthusiasm, Theresa. You make some great points about online collaboration being grouped in with social networking sites. I think administrators are extremely fearful of sites coming in to school that can in any way be seen as inappropriate and wikis really are kind of new to education. It was just a couple of years ago, a few librarians I know attended a class on creating wikis. I remember several of the librarians trying to promote the use of wikis to their department liaisons. This class is my first real experience with wikis but I can already see the benefit of it. Thanks for the websites on wikis!

Hi Theresa,

I, like you, whole-heartedly believe that Wikis are very beneficial to the educational process. Wikis are excellent tools that educators can use to help reinforce writing and communication skills, as well as respect for different opinions and views. Wikis are unique in that they can reach across all subjects and academic levels to help teach a lesson or simply be an informational tool. Contrary to the views of some, Wikis are not only useful to English teachers. Math teachers and science teachers alike can use Wikis to enhance their instruction.

Furthermore, I believe that it is imperative in today's fast moving technological society that teachers do whatever they can to "keep up with the times" and be "hip" to the interests of their students--and that includes technology. From Wikis to social networks, teachers can come up with innovative ways to implement these tools into their lesson plans. In this way, teachers can better keep their students interested in the lesson topics and reinforce academic success.

Much too often I hear teachers remarking that Wikis are a waste of time and have no place in instruction. More often than not, these are the teachers who are unwilling to learn the technology and would rather stick to the old-fashioned way of doing things--i.e., paper, pen/pencils, and books. The thought of change scares them. Why, oh why can't more educators share your insight and enthusiasm for Wikis and technology in general??!!

Great post Theresa!!

Tammy White :)