The title of chapter four is Wikis so I got a pretty good idea of what the chapter was going to be about. It started with a really cool quote: “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.” That was form the guy who founded Wikipedia. So are Wikis really this awesome of a source of information?
Wikipedia is a site that sounds like an encyclopedia. And in fact it sort of is. It houses a multitude of information from A to Z that is always changing. However “that is always changing” is a huge problem for some. According to our book every time you log onto encyclopedia.com you become the editor in chief. This allows you to change any of the information that is on the site. (If it is correct and appropriate) The success of Wikipedia has spawned a wiki revolution. Pg. 58 Now tons of businesses have them including McDonalds, Sony and BMW. Now comes the problem how do we implement this tool into our schools?
The rest of this chapter talks about this subject. Obviously many teachers are afraid of “editable” tools such Wikipedia. Are we supposed to trust our students getting information from sites that are anyone can change the information? Even if the site has hired people to watch and make corrections how fast are they at catching mistakes? The book explains though that there are many other uses for wikis. Many classrooms use wikis to complete projects and use the wiki as a portal for assignments and relevant links to many other sources. They finally end the chapter with some instructions on how we as future educators can implement wikis into the classroom. A great site to use is wikispaces.com.
This reading impacts my thinking on technology’s role in the classroom by helping me realize yet again that technology is not evil. I had never heard of a Wiki before I came into the Ed. 331 class, and when the teacher began explaining that we will be working with them throughout the course of the semester I immediately thought that they were a waste of time. Now I think that they are awesome. A wiki can be a bad place to get information but if used successfully you can use them as a powerful teaching tool!
As a future teacher I think I will try to use wikis in my classroom. Being a special needs teacher I probably will not have my students make their own, but I will hopefully have them write on the class wiki. I also will show the parents of the students that I am teaching how to access the wiki so they can view the work of their students. Finally I will be able to use wikis to find helpful resources and links for my classroom. Now that I know that wikis are not evil I am excited to explore them.
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