Wiki Pages as Social Network Project

[Elizabeth Simpson]

A friend at work assigned her students the creation of a Facebook page for characters in their independent reading. Of course, Facebook is blocked at school so they are doing it on paper. Her whiteboards are completely covered with the sheets, but, sadly, they aren't getting much written on them.

I think if the students could do something online, they would be more likely to write something. I had the idea that it might be possible to do this with a wiki page. I especially like the idea that we would know who made what changes to filter out any inappropriate comments. (Inappropriate, there's a word that really makes me feel my age.) Bad news: neither of us has any experience with wikis. I've been playing around on both Wetpaint and PBWorks. These both seem pretty easy and intuitive to use, but I don't know how students would fare with them and if this is even the best way to do this.

I would appreciate any feedback or suggestions you all might have.

[Luke Rodesiler]

Elizabeth,

I'm personally a fan of PBworks. If you haven't already done so, consider checking out the WikiMatrix to compare the features offered by various wiki providers. This might help you determine which is best for you and for addressing your students' needs.

The Facebook pages sound like a great way to get at an exploration of characters in literary texts, but I also encourage you to consider the value wikis provide beyond that option. Depending on your goals, collaboration in the form of coauthored writing projects or digital anthologies of compiled student writing might be worthy of exploration.

As for inappropriate comments, I've generally had an incredibly low number of students attempt to post inappropriate comments since I started using wikis with my high school students in '06. I would guess that the ability to see the history of a page and every user's personal touch might have something to do with this. Well, that and students' respect for each other.

Good luck!

[Donna Murdoch]

http://donnamurdoch.info/what-is-a-wiki-classroom-20

Here's a little video about PBWorks I posted on my blog that may let you know about benefits you didn't think of. It did that for me.

The video is actually on You Tube but I don't have the address offhand, no self promotion intended (I'm not selling anything anyway :))

[Kori Atwood]

Once students understand the basics - they should have a pretty easy time using wikis. I have set up wikis where I create a page for each student or group then they are responsible for the information on their page.

This is an example of a student created wiki (I created the home page)
http://rightsandwrongs.pbworks.com/

If you have not used the video "Wikis in Plain English" I highly recommend it. It can be found at:
"http://mrsatwwod.pbworks.com"

I love the facebook idea - I might have to use that one : )