Week 4.......Creating a Wiki - Reflection

 

               Wiki’s are new to me. I created my wiki a week or so ago and then thought…..now what? Well, what a difference a couple of days make. I personalised my wiki and then had a bit of a head scratching session wondering what to do with it. I thought for a moment and have decided I would like this tool to come with me on my journey into the classroom and create a bit of an interactive resource. It was also a perfect place to locate my Voki. That in itself was a marathon to work out how to Voki my Wiki. In the end I combined the technical manual and a YouTube video

                                        Source: Barnes, 2010.
                                         
 My voki asks the audience to pose questions relating to SOSE, Geography and History to begin interaction. I added a photo showing basalt rock and also requested an answer to a question which is one of the uses for my wiki.

Students in my classroom will be able to make their own wiki as I have done and better. The uses of wiki as discussed in collaborate session was once again informative and I particularly liked the idea of using the wiki as a research project for homework where all the ideas are collaborated. See, Seek and Wonder would be a great exercise to start the discussion that could lead to their research project. I found through that exercise that I was very focused on what I was actually seeing in the picture and can understand how that could be  a powerful tool in the classroom to engage children in the subject matter.  The SWOT analysis below is to scaffold my analysis.

 

Strengths Collaborate and share ideas Running history with the ability to retrieve lost data Brainstorming Embedded information File storage	Weakness No control as to what is published Keeping up with the changing technology (so that I look like I know what I am doing)
Opportunities Add Multimedia – e.g. videos, podcasts Link to other technology, websites, blogs, glogsters Involve outside world – parents, community, no boundaries Use as a tool for homework/research Projects/collaboration	Threats Lack of available computer access in the classroom/homes. School attitude towards opening the doors to cyber world

 

Using web sites that offer use of images etc. without any implications to copyright is a great way to introduce to the students the ethical and legal expectations of someone else’s intellectual property. Teaching the students to acknowledge all sources is also essential. I also like the idea of using the snip tool to use an image on the wiki with a link to the website. Being able to show the students’ ways of including intellectual property without violating the owner’s rights is going to be useful and demonstrate ways of using information within the legal and ethical constraints that are rightfully in existence.

Finally, I am looking forward to discovering some of those incredible websites which I didn’t know existed and using those technologies in my Wiki and my blog. 

References:

Barnes, M. (2010, June 24). How to teach students to embed voki onto wikis and blogs. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEEql8ndd3E&feature=player_embedded