O'Reilly article and use of a wiki

Week #3 Reflection

As with the RSS reader and the blog, I believe the wiki would be a really good tool. I think each of these things has their own place. I as a teacher would need to be much more comfortable using any of the three before I spring this on any class. These are all great communication tools, and much better than the e-mail or texting idea of communicating.
In my teaching I think the wiki could be used as a research tool for group projects. If you have 4-5 students per group and have assigned topics for them to work on together I think this would be a fantastic way to combine their research efforts. I like the way you can attach the links with your writing or just attach a link for someone else to review and give feedback. If you are going to monitor this work and each student has a wiki page then you can keep track of who has completed what. So many times 1 or 2 in the group do all of the work and the others that are a bit intimidated by the technology part of the project are left our or never really get involved in the project. I can also see using the wiki as an entire class discussion page as well. I would just need more time to use my own to come up with pertinent reasons for using this. If I were to use the wiki in class I really need to tie it to curriculum and GLEC’s, and I think Science would be the easiest class to do that. I am sure many teachers have some great ideas of how to use these in any other core area as well.
I used to be in the construction management field and I think the wiki would have been a great resource for communicating about project scheduling, tracking of materials, and researching new technologies in the construction field. It is a great way to pass on information to others that is at their finger tips, once they are on your wiki page. This really eliminates wasted time for others, so they don’t have to spend time researching things you may already have located for them. The only problem I see with a wiki in this setting is, so many of the people I worked with had limited computer access. I think we would have lost information. If I were able to get everyone on board using the wiki then you’ve got something concrete.
As stated earlier, I think the wiki is a great way to pass along research and communicate at the same time. It would be like having your computer hooked up with the person you have on the other end of your phone conversation, less a great deal of confusion and interruptions. I will enjoy working with them as long as I keep using them, that is usually the problem with technology based things and myself. However, if I like it and it works for me I will always come back to them.