Wiki's for the Classroom - Digital Tool #1

Hello everyone!

Well I noticed on our week 3 email that the 3 digital tools that we need to use and discuss are, blogs, websites and wikis. It said to create your own wiki to show you know what to do and I thought perfect, I can use the one I created for my Technology subject last term. Well I went to the page and it said that the subscription had expired. I had issues with this just before I handed in this assignment last term and the people at Wiki assured me that it was fixed, but no it iwasn't. I was a little annoyed/frustrated as I had put a lot of hard work into this last term and would have loved to use it in the classroom at some point as I find wiki's to be ingenious.. Well suffice to say, I did something about it. I emailed the help team at wiki AGAIN and the problem was fixed in two days! It may have been my error with the type of wiki I chose to build so my bad.

Originally I posted the link to the wiki that was "broken" but now it has been fixed WAHOO! Anyway below is a copy of the wiki I created with the link to the page. If I was wearing my RED hat(De Bono) I would have had to say that I was totally dejected when I found out it wan't working. But now I am estatic that I could problem solve and have it fixed. There were some slight formatting issues with the solution but I have worked that out now too.. YEY!!!!!! Such is life when using technology.

Digital Resource – Back to the Future wikispace

The digital resource I created was a wikispace.

The first lesson at Destination 1 was totally student directed through an inquiry model.
The following four lessons use the wikispace as a guide and visual clues. For these four lessons it is used as a teacher directed resource.
You can access it on the following link: - http://designchallenge2012.wikispaces.com/
Here is a screen shot of the home page to ensure you get to the correct page (Please note that the picture no the left is no longer there):-

REFLECTION ON WIKI's as a Digital Tool

I enjoyed designing this Wiki space. It was the first one I had ever designed, but as I had already designed two websites through Wix website builder and kept my workplace website up to date I was familiar withh the process of creating wikis.

I think that wikis are a great tool, as you could hold discussions with the students and it is password protected as there is the ability for each student to have their own log in name. It could be accessed anywhere there was internet. I could embed photos or you tube clips, word documents or pdf's. It is such a great tool and I defintiely think that it could be an invaluable tool in the classroom and for homework activities. Wikis also allow for scaffolding of lessons and the use of creativity. They are a great tool to implement Bloom's Taxonomy and higher order thinking.

I wonder if I will have to create another wiki now or if this will be enough to prove I know what I am doing? Only time will tell I guess:)

Signing off