Wikis

= = toc =__Why Use Wikis__= A great list from: Smart Teaching.org

** Resource Creation ** Using these ideas, your students can collaboratively create classroom valuables. ** Student Participation ** These projects are sure to get your students involved. ** Group Projects ** Allow wikis to facilitate group work by using these ideas. ** Student Interaction ** Get your students to work together on these projects. ** For the Classroom ** Use your wiki to create spaces that are special to your class. ** Community ** Reach out to the community with these resources that everyone can appreciate. ** Other ** Here are even more fun and useful ways to improve your classroom with a wiki.
 * 1) ** [|Virtual field trips] **: Have your students research far away places they would like to go on a field trip, and get them to share images and information about the location.
 * 2) ** [|Create presentations] **: Instead of using traditional presentation software, put presentations on a wiki.
 * 3) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">**  [|Write] [| a Wikibook] **: Make it a class project to collaboratively write a reference book that others can use.
 * 4) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Study guides] **: Ask students to create study guides for a specific part of the unit you’re studying.
 * 5) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Readers’ guides] **: Have your students create readers’ guides to share their favorite and most important parts of works you’ve read in class.
 * 6) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Solving wiki] **: Post difficult math problems, such as calculus, so that the class can collaboratively solve them.
 * 7) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Glossary] **: Get your class to create a glossary of terms they use and learn about in new units, adding definitions and images.
 * 8) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Class encyclopedia] **: Ask your class to create an "encyclopedia" on a topic, adding useful information that can be built upon through the years.
 * 9) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Create exploratory projects] **: If you’re teaching a new subject, ask your students to collect and share information in the wiki so that you can learn together.
 * 1) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Exam review] **: Encourage students to share review notes and other helpful pieces of information on your classroom’s wiki.
 * 2) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Peer review] **: Allow students to draft their papers in a wiki, then ask other students to comment it.
 * 3) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Student portfolios] **: Assign portfolio pages to each of your students, and allow them to display and discuss their work.
 * 4) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Correction competition] **: You can post a document riddled with mistakes, then have students compete to see who can fix the most errors fastest.
 * 5) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Peer editing] **: Ask students to edit each others’ work for spelling, grammar, and facts based on a style guide or rules you’ve defined.
 * 6) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Vocabulary lists] **: Encourage students to submit words that they had trouble with, along with a dictionary entry.
 * 7) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Get feedback] **: Ask students to post comments on wiki pages.
 * 8) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Share notes] **: Let your students share their collective information so that everyone gets a better understanding of the subject.
 * 1) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Group authoring] **: By asking groups to use central documents in a wiki, you can ensure that everyone’s documentation will be uniform.
 * 2) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Grandma timeline] **: Have your students create a history timeline using Grandmas as units of time.
 * 3) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Organize ideas] **: Allow group members to post their ideas in a wiki, and you’ll cut down on duplicate ideas, while at the same time allowing them to build upon the ideas.
 * 4) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Fan clubs] **: Start fan clubs for your students’ favorite figures from history and ask them to contribute their favorite quotes, photos, and other tidbits together.
 * 5) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Track projects] **: With wikis, it’s easy for students to see which tasks have been completed and which ones still need to be fulfilled.
 * 6) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Track participation] **: Assign a wiki page to a group project, and then individual pages for each student to show their participation.
 * 1) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Collect data] **: Use central documents to make sure that data collection is uniform and easy to manage.
 * 2) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Mock-debate] **: Pit two class candidates against each other and perform a debate on your wiki.
 * 3) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Study buddy matching] **: Let students match themselves up into study buddy pairs.
 * 4) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** Multi-author story **: Start a creative writing unit, and get your students to write a short story together, each writing a small amount of the story.
 * 5) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Choose your own adventure story] **: A twist on the multi-author story could be a choose your own adventure story, where each student branches out into a different path.
 * 6) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Share reviews] **: Post articles for different movies, books, and TV shows, encouraging students to share what they though about them.
 * 7) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Literature circles] **: Host a book club on your wiki where students are required to read the same book, then discuss it on the wiki.
 * 1) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Classroom FAQ] **: Make it a class project to create an FAQ for your classroom that will help new students and those that will come in years later.
 * 2) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** Classroom scrapbook **: Share news, photos, and current achievements in your classroom on a wiki page.
 * 3) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Calendar] **: Create a calendar on the wiki and encourage students to add their own personally important dates.
 * 4) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Classroom newspaper] **: Create your own news outlet on a wiki.
 * 5) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Hall of fame] **: Highlight students’ exceptional achievements on the wiki.
 * 6) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Classroom policies] **: Encourage students to draft rules and policies for the classroom.
 * 1) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|School tour] **: Get your class to take photos of your school and write about their favorite spots on the wiki, then share it with the rest of your school and your local community.
 * 2) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Recipe book] **: Ask students to bring in their favorite recipes from home, then share them with parents and the rest of the community.
 * 3) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|International sharing] **: Collaborate with a class from another country and share information about your culture, or even a day in the life of a typical student.
 * 4) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Local history] **: Document historical buildings, events, and more from our community. You can ask students to perform interviews, and encourage parents and other adults to contribute their knowledge in the wiki.
 * 5) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Community FAQ] **: Ask students to create an FAQ for their community, then pass it on to your next group of students.
 * 6) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Community nature guide] **: Have your students collect highlights of plants and animals in your community.
 * 7) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Share achievements] **: Let parents log in to the wiki to see what their children have accomplished.
 * 1) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Let your students leave their books at school] **: With a strong classroom wiki, you should have a wealth of information available, so much so that students can leave their books at school and access information online.
 * 2) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** Use wikis as a hub **: Any time a student creates anything online, ask them to link to it or upload it to the wiki so that everyone can use it.
 * 3) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Make website creation easier for students] **: Using a wiki platform, students don’t have to worry about web design, so they can focus on content instead.
 * 4) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Organization] **: Save links, documents, and quotes related to units or your classroom as a whole.
 * 5) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Track assignments] **: If you ask students to put their research on wikis, you can check in on their progress to make sure they’re on the right path.
 * 6) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Teacher collaboration] **: Work with other teachers to create lesson plans and track students’ success.
 * 7) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Geneva,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">** [|Create and pass a legislative bill] **: Let students see the back and forth that exists in legislation by creating their own and attempting to pass it.

=__Quick Ideas__= Turn a wiki into a...
 * reference /help book
 * topic encyclopedia
 * student portfolio
 * book /movie/game review
 * Book Club
 * Classroom/School FAQ
 * personal website for the students

=__Great Wikis__= Greetings from Around the World Mr Stanhope Math Wiki 6Ts Class Wiki

=__Wiki Platforms__= Wikispaces Wet Paint PBWorks

=__Help__= Getting Tricky With Wikis 50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom