Wikis

What are wikis? Have a look at this video for a good intro:




At Parkviewclc we have been dipping our toes into using wikis. Of all the wiki "farms" we decided to go with wikispaces.com. We've had a few problems but generally we're very excited by them. You can see what we started doing with a year 6 class here.

From here you can link to the groups and their own individual haunted house. This project lasted for about 6 hours in total and was run at the school using their own ICT suite. Problems encountered were:

1. Not enough PCs for 1 per pupil
2. Login/email issues
3. Some inappropriate advertising on sites

These were in no way unsolvable problems. We paired up pupils to support each other which helped ease PC demand. After the first session, we created 30 users for wikispaces (which took less time than you'd think!) and then assigned pupils their own login. The final issue isn't too bad - on the free version of wikispaces you get advertising down the right side of the site. They aren't as bad as you'd find on other "mainstream" sites but they can be completely removed by a small paid subscription.

Pupils and teachers were very engaged by the wikispaces and as preparation for SATs and creative writing skills it has been a great success. It helped that the school we worked with (St Saviour's) were very responsive to innovations in ICT and were quick to see the benefits. To see a "completed" wikispace on creative writing (although whether you can ever have a "completed" wikispace is an interesting question...) here.

The real bonus for us as a CLC is that once we left the pupils and teachers were able to continue their sites at school and at home using the logins we provided.

Wikispaces are a great tool for a wide variety of uses. Here are a few exemplars that might spark off some ideas:

Burr and Burton Academy

http://westwood.wikispaces.com/

http://podcastjazz.pbwiki.com/