Wikis and Learning

To encourage collaboration and see the impact on student learning, I created and used wikis with students this year. My “letsshare” wiki was used by three different book clubs. The Diary of Anne Frank and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry was used by fifth grade groups; On My Honor was used with a fourth grade group. The wikis were structured to promote high level thinking and included pages with guiding questions, reflections, comparisons, predictions, character analysis, and links to outside resources.

The “ancientgreecemuseum” wiki was used by a sixth grade class to share information about the Cultural Universals of Ancient Greece: artistic expression, authority and government, basic needs, daily life, geography and climate, power, recreation and leisure, technology, and trade and economy. There was a page for each Cultural Universal where students shared their research and reflected on how the Ancient Greeks used human ingenuity to change their society. They also used the space to brainstorm ideas for a museum they were designing as a culminating project. It was fascinating to see how the trade and economy group used font colors to distinguish important concepts in their research; a key identified pink text as items that the Greeks traded; blue text was where they traded; and black text was money or other.

The wikis supported collaborative learning, yet the page history provided a level of individual accountability. Students were told that their pages could be viewed by anyone and letters were sent to parents inviting them to view the content. I believe that this “world audience” was highly motivational for students and gave them a sense of responsibility for the information, and final wiki pages contained high quality content.

My experience this year has shown that wikis provide a venue for organizing and presenting information in collaboration with others and are highly motivational for students.

If you would like to view the wikis, visit http://letsshare.wikispaces.com/ or http://ancientgreecemuseum.wikispaces.com/.