Task 7 - Wikis

Today's assignment was to look at Wikis, particularly in the context of classrooms. In particular, the uses of actually setting up a Wiki (as opposed to merely using various online reference sources that are in Wiki format, which the kids will all do at this point anyway).

This is something I probably should have actually done last year in Calculus. The kids set up a Facebook group and so forth already, so they were collaborating online anyway. I tend to think a Wiki would have ended up being a more flexible and powerful tool for some of the things they wanted to do, and it would have been easy to extend it to more robust and practical uses.

While studying Wikis, I looked at a few of the classroom Wikis at school. I started with HS classes that I was pretty familiar with. I started with Brian's AP Envronmental Science class. The main uses that I saw seemed to be 1) for a handy online page of relevant links, and 2) a way to pool data for a collaborative research project. The collaborative material seemed pretty successful -- they ended up with a fairly elaborate list of species found in the Lullwater Creek area with information about diet and so forth. A Wiki seemed like a good way to do this, since a list like that can be added to on the fly ("oh, hey! millipedes! we haven't done them yet!") and that gradual accumulation of group effort is a good way to make the list pretty comprehensive. The links and so forth were useful information, but didn't seem to rely as strongly on the nature of Wikis.

I also took a look at Dave Fergemann's Computer Science class. Again, some of the information was provided by the teacher as a reference to the students. It looked like there were plans to have the students themselves create a handy online Wiki about programming in Python, but that only a couple of students really participated and none of the "advanced topics" actually got written about. Student pages on their individual projects were a pretty good way for students to present information, and these were mostly successful. The individual pages for students to simply write about a topic of interest seemed a little odd to me. For one thing, the actual technical skills involved were usually very minor, so it didn't seem to have a strong curricular use. Also, the content was usually pretty superficial (roughly "I think this is cool. Here are some links") and sometimes questionable (I can do without having classroom pages linking to The Pirate Bay). I did enjoy seeing Daniel's page of photography -- it was simply a showcase for creative work he did outside the class, but it was a nice thing to have.

I finished up with a look at Martha and Brian's classroom page (which we'd seen a little of in a faculty meeting this year). Here, there were a very wide range of uses, and because an elementary class has such a broad scope, the variety all felt "on topic" to me. The accumulated resource model was in effect for doing a cumulative vocabulary list. The showcase for interesting content was in effect for things like one students page on her world travels. There were also a few different programs/resources that were linked together in the Wiki; for example, the poetry page was actually a Google doc.

In general, for my own classes, I tend to think that Mathematics is a very collaborative endeavor. It relies on people sharing information about methods and ways of thinking that they have found useful. Students learn better when they can bounce their ideas off each other, and the process is more enjoyable as well. Ideally, a Wiki in a math class should try to capture some of this collaborative process. One obvious first start would be creating an online review guide to the material in the course. Students always want a Study Guide, and particularly by the time exams roll around if we've been creating review content throughout the term we'd have an Exam guide ready to go. As all teachers pretty much realize, the act of creating review material is, in itself, great review. The act of explaining something to someone else is a great way to clarify your own thinking. This would involve keeping up with the Wiki pretty constantly, if the material is to be available in a timely fashion.

One thing I'd have to think about is how this sort of activity is "counted". There are kids for whom the whole thing would be fun and natural, and they'd dive right in with very little prodding. Other kids would find it difficult and frustrating. I would be inclined to require at least a little Wiki work from everyone, but let the really gung-ho kids go above and beyond the basics. The question is whether merely creating something useful, being appreciated by your peers, and having the teacher say swell things about you in evaluations is enough "credit", or whether I need to formally assign extra credit. I tend to think a smallish amount of Extra Credit for valuable Wiki service is in order. Anyway, something to think about this summer.