Wiki Wiki What??

Visit My Wiki!

I have to admit, at first I did not get the wiki site. I was confused and found my self wandering around the features, finding my own way. This is typically my learning style. It is difficult for me to read dry text and decipher what is needed, so I opt for the hands-on approach on my own.
Once I got the hang of pbworks, I noticed a lot of similarities between a wiki, blog, and the old school personal website. While the editing and visibility features a similar to a blog, allowing multiple pages is reminiscent of the personal websites many people used during the Web 1.0 era. In addition, wiki pages offer the unique option of multiple users, an option that I am not sure I am entirely comfortable with. Maybe it's just a touch of paranoia, but I feel really uncomfortable with the idea of allowing other users to edit my pages, while they are my responsibility.

As an early childhood educator, I don't imagine using a wiki with preschool age children any time soon. However, one of the struggles my building faces is the limited amount of time we have to accomplish many tasks. Using a wiki would make collaboration on lesson planning, community events, and general staff information. It could reduce the amount of long staff meetings and create a meeting ground for special committees.

If I were teaching in the older grades, I could see wikis being a valuable tool for things like research projects and group work. Students could report to their wikipage, hyper link sources and additional information, and collaborate on details, from virtually anywhere at anytime. The opportunity to work together in this way would reduce the amount of in-classroom group time and after school meeting inconvienience.

Overall, I felt like the wiki lesson was a valuable one. I was introduced to a technology I really didn't know existed. This is something I could potentially bring back to my work and share with my co-workers as a suggestion to solve our time crunch problem.