Friday 7 November 2014

Weekly Report & Reflection Post #8

Hey everyone!
So November has been a busy month already and its only the 7th! I don't know about everyone else but I cannot wait till exams are over, then I can do my happy dance!

This week in session 8, we explored wikis!
Wiki PD. (CC) 2014
I have heard of a lot of courses here at Brock that use Wiki's to complete projects and are posted for other groups to see. I never thought that I would be able to use a wiki in one of my classes, but finally I got to. At first I really did not understand why a wiki was useful. It just seemed as though it was a place people could add and take away information based on what they believed and  because of Wikipedia, I thought wiki's were unreliable sources. However, my eyes have been opened! They are great ways to support learning and have classes combine the information they have found and share with each other. Especially in high school, this is a great way for students to do research and learn from each other. While learning about wikis, I found this example that a high school class did to debate about climate change . There was criteria that the class had to follow which was posted on the wiki home page and on the side, each team had a link where they could post their information that linked to the debate. It is a very interesting tool that has much potential in the education world.

I could definitely see myself using a wiki in the future as a teacher. I like how it allows students to collaborate and use 21st century skills such as creativity, technology and collaboration with others. In comparison to Evernote, I think that I would prefer a wiki, however Google docs still remains one of my favorite online tools. Google docs allows more conversation with students with the comment tool and overall, suits classroom needs more.

A great way a wiki could be used is when there is a topic of interest that students want to discover. There is new student based learning strategy that has become very popular in the education world called genius hour. It is a time where students are aloud to research any thing that they are curious about and at the end of the semester or year, student get to present what they learned from their topic of interest. I think a wiki would be a great idea for genius hour because then students can post their educational findings on a common site that everyone can have access to and learn from. I think that would be a great way to apply a wiki in an educational context.


Here is a video that explains Genius hour and how awesome it is!


This week, my Feedly feed of interest is related to the theme of this week Digital Rights and Responsibilities. It is an article on what students really need to know about digital citizenship
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/digital-citizenship-need-to-know-vicki-davis

Thanks for reading!
Missemilyp

Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. colleena8 November 2014 at 21:09

    Hi Emily! You and I both - I cannot WAIT for exams to be over, I am so excited for another break! Anyways, I completely felt the same way about Wikis until this week - although I had never heard of a class at Brock using one (guess I'm just not in those types of classes). I thought Wikis were unreliable and not to be trusted - but I had never actually thought of using them as a source of collaboration - I enjoyed your link to the climate change debate! As a future teacher I left a link on my reflection this week on how to use digital sources to better online learning - feel free to take a look if you have a chance! Great post!
    - Colleen

    ReplyDelete
  2. lauren9 November 2014 at 12:52

    Hi Emily,
    I was unsure about wiki’s when I started this week as well. I think they can be useful but I really like google docs. I think for teaching and class work is could be good! On your other post I found it so interesting how those classes paired up and actually used google docs and worked together to finish this project online. This just goes to show how useful google docs can be and how teaching and schools are going to changing drastically, everything is on the internet now. It makes me feel old!
    Great Post!
    -Lauren

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)