Creating Wikis for the Classroom

Portfolio piece # 7 required my colleagues and me to create a simple wiki that can be used for classroom instruction.  A wiki is a new and innovative classroom tool that can be used for classroom instruction and reinforcement.  It is a website that allows anyone to add, delete or revise content by using a web browser.  You are invited to visit my group’s wiki page that we created to discuss our views on the Department of Teacher Education.  Below is the URL to my group’s wiki.  I hope you will find some meaningful information there!!!

http://promoting21stcenturylearning.wikispaces.com/

Wikis can be used to improve classroom instruction in many ways.  It can allow easy access to materials used in class such as videos, power point presentations, notes, podcasts and other technological tools at any given time.  Students are given the opportunity to look back and reflect on the materials discussed in class to help when revising for a test or exam.  Another way it can improve classroom instruction is that it can be used to post weekly newsletters for both students and parents.  This allows parents to be aware of what is going on in their children's lives and will be able to help and assist their students when necessary.  Wikis can also be used to showcase students' work and helps to build students' writing skills outside the classroom setting.  Such classroom instructions allows students to collaborate openly, add files, suggest links and create comprehensive documents.  Finally, wikis can improve classroom instruction by sharing resources and links on the same page with just a click that will be very useful and accessible to students. 

The challenges that my group members and I encountered when creating this wiki is that we had difficulty commenting on each others page.  This is because it was the first time we were introduced to such a teaching tool hence, we were amateurs to the process.  However, after fiddling and experimenting for quite some time, we were able to overcome this challenge.  Another challenge that we faced is that we had difficulty adding pictures and pages to the wiki.  However, we overcame this obstacle with the help of our lecturer and some experimentation of our own.  I believe that this piece could have been improved a lot.  I believe that we could have added a few more pages and provide some more information for the audience.  However, this is still a learning process for us and we are still trying to become ICT literate in this aspect of technology.