Wiki - Technology 1

My wiki page is very simple, I’ve asked other students to share their name, what their favourite sport/recreational activity is and why? I designed this wiki as an introduction type activity for my HPE class (one of my teaching areas). I’ve provided a PMI thinking routine to show higher order thinking in regards to this particular wiki.

PLUS

-          Encourages online collaboration

-          Anyone can edit and contribute to the wiki

-          Encourages connectivism because we are learning with computers and the internet

-          Encourages constructivism

-          Caters for the 21^st learner, using something like this will be meaningful for the learner outside the classroom

-          Students can learn about different sports and recreational activities

-          Students might gain interest in a sport/recreational activity from reading the different contributions, resulting in students participating in physical activity

-          As a teacher, this wiki can provide me with a good understanding into what my students enjoy playing, therefore I can produce lessons that cater for most of these favourite activities

-          Students can find similar interests about one another (make friends)

-          Students can share different ideas, views, knowledge, experience and information using the wiki

-          Great way of students getting to know who is in their class

-          You can track changes to the wiki

-          It’s easy to correct mistakes

MINUS

-          No face to face contact among students

-          Needs to be an adequate amount of computers to perform the activity

-          Students might not have the knowledge and experience with working with computers and wikis

INTERESTINGS

-          Anyone can add, edit or remove information

-          No chronological order

Suggestions on how I could apply this wiki to my learning environment:

Once the students have added what sport or recreational activity they enjoy, I could then create some lessons based on the information the students have given me. For example, say most of the students enjoy swimming. I could do a small unit focusing on swimming. Using the same wiki we started with, I could get students to create a small text book (wikibook) type thing on how swimming can be beneficial for your health. Mind you, this is just one example on how I could apply this wiki to my learning environment. The wiki could also be used for assignment and homework purposes. There could be a wiki page for homework and assignment questions, so the teacher doesn’t have to keep repeating themselves. Furthermore, the students have a permanent text based record of the questions so they can refer back to if needed. I also think wikis are a great tool for when students are absent because they can still learn what’s going on without attending class. Wikis can be used for classroom discussion and debating areas, place to collect web resources and to manage classroom documents. These are just few suggestions but I think there are several more ways of applying a wiki into the classroom you just need to be creative.