Wiki Success
I chose to read the blog site called Adventures in Educational blogging. The entry I enjoyed the most was about the implementation of the Wiki for school conferences. Susan Sedro, the author of this blog, talked about the timeline of the Wiki including elements such as training, problems/solutions, procedures, and success. In her blog she talked about how the wiki is much more accommodating for families and is less work for the teacher. Many families would sign up for a specific time on the wiki then would go back and change their times as conflicts arose. She mentioned several accounts of teachers not having to make any phone calls to the parents. Some problems that they ran into during the implementation of the wiki was accidental deletes made by other people and multiple parents editing the wiki space at the same time. These were just minor problems due to the way the wiki was setup. A lot of the times the wiki would not allow the page to be edited at the same time (in which case they would have to try later) and if there was a name deleted it was usually filed in its memory. Out of all the parents that used the wiki only 10% didn't find it helpful. The reasoning they gave was because they were uncomfortable with technology. After reading this blog, I realized how useful wiki's can be in the classroom. Besides it being helpful for parent teacher conference sign ups, it would also be great for in class projects, chore list, etc. This is something that can be easily put on my teacher website as well.
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I think that wikis are helpful as well. It sounds like most parents like the idea of using a wiki, too. Although 10% said they didn't find it helpful due to being uncomfortable with technology, providing wikis more often would possibly help these parents ease into it. I like wikis because they can be used with all subjects and for just about anything. And having them available on a teacher website is a great idea!
ReplyDeleteI never would have thought of using wikis for parents. What a great idea!!! Only 10% of the parents were against it. That is actually pretty encouraging to hear. I would think way more parents would be against it because it is too technological or something.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I could see how the wiki deleting information could be a definite problem. If a parent put some "insightful" stuff on there and saw that it got erased, they could be pretty ticked. However, as long as it is well managed, I think it is a great idea!!!