Wikis ~ Week7#16&17

It took me a while to decide how to authentically explore the idea of wikis. I didn't want to create a fake wiki and have it hanging out in cyberspace like a delinquent teen whose parents have lost interest. So when my juniors were reading George Orwell's 1984, it was the perfect opportunity for me to experiment with this social networking format while teaching students the advantages (anyone can edit the content) and drawbacks (anyone can edit the content) of such a tool. First, I posted an idea and asked students to define and comment on it. Students enjoyed experimenting with the social aspect of the assignment, but only a few took the actual assignment seriously. Since this was their first encounter with contributing to a wiki, I felt students learned a lot about the process but not much about the intended content lesson.
The next time students edited the 184 wiki, they were asked to view a video and read articles relating to personal privacy and join two discussion threads. This structure seemed to work better in the confines of a class period spent in the computer lab. Students were less infatuated with the idea of chatting with their neighbors and adhered to the assignment.
For the final wiki-related assignment, students were given 4 days to access the wiki which offered two questions which they were to answer and using the notification feature of the site send their responses to me. Because of the previous in-class trainings, all students were able to access the questions on wiki and electronically send the answer to me.
The experience taught me a lot about the potential for use of the wikis in the classroom. My hope was that students would appreciate the digital format that allowed them to experiment with a new type of technology tool that they will definitely encounter beyond high school.
The address of the wiki is http://1984rbhs.wikispaces.com/.