Wikis for the Classroom

There was so much information to digest about wikis and how best to use them in the classroom that  I had trouble beginning one. Resources I used included the internet and the book by Will Richardson, Blogs, Wikis, Podcast, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms to help me decide. From use as a teacher or school website to virtual tours to students creating their own study guides to be used from year to year, it seems there was no end of ideas for using wikis. After viewing many websites such as SmartTeaching.org for an article on 50 Ways to Use Wikis For a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom my mind boggled at the possibilities. I decided to start my first wiki as a website and will gradually let it evolve. Usually I have students make PowerPoint slides to contribute to making a class study guide, but perhaps this will be my next direction with the wiki I created. Having visited several free educational wikis, I settled upon using Wikispaces because it allows for easy classroom management, which I will explore down the road when I add my first users. For now my district expects every teacher to maintain their website weekly, if not daily. This year we began migration towards becoming a Google Educational Domain which, you guessed it, will require learning all about their apps including making a website. I'm not sure it would be valuable to maintain two separate teacher pages as far as my time is concerned. I'm thinking this will push me into taking that next step and use a wiki more frequently for a variety of uses. The collaborative approach to projects such as making a study guide not only fulfills local, state, and national (NETS-S 1-6) requirements in technology but the ease of use of Wikispaces will allow me to check on who is successfully contributing to a project while making the students accountable for their learning. Now that we will be able to use GoogleDocs for the same collaborative reasons, I wonder which one will survive in my repertoire?

You are welcome to browse my teacher page wiki, TechnoTiger. Find out how I chose the name and check out the virtual tour assignment I created for my grade 4 class.