Learning and Using Wikis

In graduate school, some of my classmates and I had a habit of editing entries on Wikipedia whenever we came across something we found incorrect or poorly written. Also, there is a wiki for college jobs in the field of Classical Studies that an anonymous owner updates annually. Professionals in the market for a position often check it and update it based on job offers and acceptances. Therefore, I was already quite familiar with the nature and function of a wiki.

I have wanted to build my own wiki and learn more about managing a wiki for a couple of years now. It seems like a good way to keep those serving in different ministries of my church informed about ongoing projects. The wiki created for this assignment (http://orderedmusings.pbworks.com) will be a good place to test out how to organize different pages of a wiki. Setting up and editing the first page on PBwiki was easy, but there are several aspects of the layout and widgets that will take me some time to become comfortable using. Also, designing an intuitive page hierarchy in my wiki will require some thought.

If I were to use a wiki in my classroom, it would probably be a place for the students of a class to develop a literary encyclopedia. Each of my classes could create encyclopedia (Wikipedia-style) on a literary work, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, for example. Each student would be required to generate a page on a character and to correct or add to another character's page. During class time, I could have the students write plot summaries for each scene as we read them. One of the pages would serve as the To-Do list of characters and scenes that need to be entered.

This use of a wiki supports Common Core objectives for ELA in several areas. Of course there are objectives like frequency of writing (ELA-W9-10.10) and production and distribution (ELA-W9-10.4, 5, 6) that are directly fulfilled in an assignment like this. Additionally, this assignment would hit on all six of the domains in the ISTE standards for students.