Your Own Wiki Pages
Isn’t the collective knowledge of the Internet demonstrated on sites like Wikipedia amazing? Imagine being able to create your own private pages, totally specific to your course material. Imagine your students being able to log on and participate in the creation and editing of these pages. Heather Baker of Plymouth H.S. turned me on to Wikispaces.com, where all this imagination bares fruit.
If you’re at all intimidated by the idea of web design, do not fret, the page editor was constructed to work much like a word processor. There is also a guided tour on the main page where you can view a pages birth, and customization.
Creating Wiki pages is a motivating way to engage students in improving their writing skills. Rather than see a teacher’s writing assignment as “one more paper to write”, students find themselves immersed in creating a web page that meets the same goal, yet, in their perspective is much more “fun”. I think Heather’s on to something wonderful!
