I have been a long-time consumer of Wikis but had never created one myself until recently. There is a lot of good information available regarding how to best use Wikis as a collaboration tool in education but the one that really got my attention was this one: https://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0452.asp?bhcp=1
The author stresses an important point. "To truly empower students within collaborative or coconstructed activities requires the teacher to relinquish some degree of control over those activities." I think many objections to the use of Wikis, from parents to administrators to teachers themselves, is that to allow Wikis to work as intended, teachers must give up some of their control and this is a very difficult thing for teachers to do.
As a teacher of juniors and seniors in a high school environment, I feel that students are ready to take on this challenge and it is even a necessary part of their development on their way to the "real world" that is just steps away for most of them. I am going to be the one that needs my hand held, not them.
1 comment:
Becky, I quite agree that this is a form of literacy that HS students should be exposed to. They need to know how to operate in this environment. There is no doubt that they can manage the technology, but it is up to us to allow them to learn to use it as a communication tool.
Lee Anne
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