Wikis for middle school

[Stephanie Paul]

Blogs are blocked in my district, but wikis are not. Today, I noticed a classroom teacher using a wiki with her kids, so now I'm getting ready to take the plunge and start a library wiki. It could be for students and teachers. I will moderate. They were using pbworks.com I was wondering what you recommend.
Thanks.

[Elisabeth LeBris]

Hi Stephanie,

I have a blog here at school but would love to use a wiki as well. My blog is aimed at the 5th-8th graders and I use it mostly for book reviews, announcements and library news. I am interested in how junior high librarians are using wikis.

[Urania Beyer]

Hi Stephanie,
Inspired by Joyce Valenza's work, I use a wiki for research pathfinders. I also use a blog aimed to middle school for news and display of students' work.
I use Wikispaces and blogspot, and like them very much. They are free, easy to use and offers what I need. The only drawback are the adds that show up in Wikispaces (you can get rid of them for a fee).
Urania

[Stephanie Paul]

Thanks Urania. Your comment regarding the ads is important. I think that is why other teachers in my district don't use Wikispaces.

[Joyce Valenza]

Urania and Stephanie,
You can avoid the ads by starting at http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers

You can get rid of the ads after the fact but going to Manage Wiki>subscriptions> and then scroll to the bottom and select educational use.

joyce

[Stephanie Paul]

That's great. Thanks Joyce!

[Michelle Rinker]

Yes- thanks Joyce! I knew that wikispaces offered free upgrades for K-12 educational use but I didn't know how to go about requesting it. It was very simple in the Subcriptions link and now all of my wikis are soon to be ad-free- hooray!

I have used wikispaces with my Gr. 4-8 students. Here are some of our wikis for you to take a look at. We added Clustrmaps to some of them and so my students will be excited to see that we have more visitors from around the world (we are located in Yangon, Myanmar!) Let me know if you have any questions Stephanie!

Cheers-
Michelle Rinker- International School Yangon

Gr. 4- Middle Ages http://medieval4.wikispaces.com/

Gr. 6- Ancient Egypt http://johnstone6.wikispaces.com/

Gr. 6- Middle East http://middleeast6a09.wikispaces.com/

Gr. 7- Earth Science http://g7earthmaterials.wikispaces.com/

[Karen Dumas]

Michelle, 

Thanks so much for sharing your wiki samples. They are awesome. How great to see and click through them. You have inspired me! Thanks for sharing. 

Karen Dumas

[Martha Hickson]

I have used PBworks and Wikispaces with my high school students. Both are quite nice. If I had to pick one, it would be PBworks. Among the PBworks features that come with the free version for educators is the ability to create folders, which enables me to use a single wiki with multiple sections of a class. I create a folder for each section, and post section-specific materials there, or students in the section can place their wiki pages within that folder.

I also use wikis as a platform when I deliver PD classes to fellow educators. (It's my sneaky way of encouraging more teachers to incorporate educational technology in their own lessons.) For an example of a PBworks-based wiki class, go here: http://nhv-podcasting.pbworks.com/

For the past two summers, PBworks has offered a wiki-based "Summer Camp" for educators. That professional development opportunity has been outstanding, covering not only wikis, but also loads of other web 2.0 applications for educators. You can take a look at the archived wiki from last year's PBworks Summer Camp here: http://camppbworks.pbworks.com/

[Marianne Haggerty]

I would use Google wikispaces, because the educational version has no advertising. Take a look, maybe pbworks has a similar product for teachers. http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers

[Stephanie Paul]

Unfortunately Wikispaces is blocked. I was recently in a professional group and our wiki was on wikispaces. I had to wait to go home to access it. PBworks is the "preferred" wiki in the district. I don't know why. Thanks for your comment.

[Janet Yarn]

I am using wikispaces for students to collaborate on a creating an interactive dictionary of technology terms.  Each class has a wiki and they can add their own images, audio, video, or screen recordings to the wiki.  We have been creating our artifacts and will post to the wiki next week.  I'll post the link when complete.

 

In MS this might also work well in a Social Studies class for students to collaborate on creating a resource about different countries.  Students could add links, video experiences, or pictures. 

 

 

[Karen Dumas]

Thanks, Janet for sharing your ideas for use of wikis in elementary schools. I appreciate the sharing. 

Karen