Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Wiki Reflection Blog



It is the tendency of human beings to simplify everything; it saves our time. Wikispaces provided same experience to me. Starting wiki was fast and simple!

While creating the page,I found that there is an option for discussion to interact with the people with whom the page is shared. The 'Notify' option makes it possible to get an email if someone makes a correction on the  page. We can also find out about the number of times anyone  has visited a shared page and made the changes to the document by clicking on the 'History' button.

The 'widget' category has amazing options to choose from. One can insert the slideshow, bookmark  (delicious), chat box (skype), videos, images, audio and so on. Glogster edu allows us to embed the glog in the page.The pages on wiki are advertisement free and the wiki which is used exclusively for primary and secondary education (K-12) is absolutely free. It  was a great relief to know that only the individuals who belong to my group can view my page.


The strengths of wikispaces that I could think of while doing collaborative work are
  • Creating pages collaboratively is much faster
  • Lot of different resources are used to create a collaborative work ,thus it enriches the creation.
  • Editing of the page can be done by all who share the page.
  • Different perspectives help in making the information more precise. Mistakes can be rectified immediately when different people work on same page.
  • All the revisions for every page are saved therefore there is no chance of loosing the data all together.
  • The  history option provides the details of the users who edited the pages. 
  • There is also an option on the left hand side of the page which provide the details of the users who are working on other pages. 


Weaknesses of wikispaces while doing collaborative work:

Everyone finished creating one's own assigned page but for collaborative work the confusion prevailed amongst the users as to who would do which page and which part of the page. Ultimately they got over it by posting the queries and doubts in the discussion forum.


As a science teacher, I can think of using wiki in my class in the following ways:
  1. A bigger concept can be chunked down into sub-topics and these can be assigned to the groups of students. 'History' option will enable me to check who all worked on the project. (This feature will ensure that everyone in the group works).
  2. For Science Fair, the students have to write a detailed report. Wiki can be used to teach these steps before they work on their real project.
  3. Wiki can be used to write the lab reports also. Investigative labs and their  reports are very elaborate and they have different steps, therefore pairing the students and assigning them one step for one lab and then asking them to move to second step for next lab will ensure that each student learns all the steps of writing the lab report.


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