Wiki opportunities in education

Dr. Scott McLeod posted a call to educators in the blogosphere to talk about technology and how education needs to further embrace it to enhance learning. I know it is late on the 4th, but this is the first chance I have had to work on this today. With the teachers and students on summer break, I have had time to read articles and think about ideas to help our staff continue to deliver exceptional learning opportunities for our students. Recently, I watched a YouTube video of a speech by Harvard professor Dr. Richard Elmore about the resilience of teacher culture and this prompted me to look further into ways our teachers can share ownership of learning with our students so we can strive to work more regularly with the higher skills on Bloom's taxonomy. I like the idea of using Wikis to share the creative element of knowledge. I am going to share this with the teachers to see how we can use wikis to make new learning opportunities for our students. I am intrigued by this being something our students can contribute to while expanding their learning. Hopefully this will be easy for teachers and students to use.

Comments

[David Jakes]

Hey Jason: can't believe you are a principal now! As your former Biology teacher, congratulations.

Wikis are an outstanding tool and in District 99, perhaps the hottest technology. With any technology, it must support a fundamental literacy that schools believe in-in this case, wikis can be an essential component of teaching collaboration, cooperatiion, and contribution. Students now longer need to meet face to face to build content, it can be done asynchronously, nor do classes that wish to collaborate in a cross-curricular fashion need to meet at the same time, or in the same building or time zone for that matter-it can be all done in a wiki. See Julie Lindsay/Vicki Davis' Flat Classroom project as an example of how a wiki can be a platform for student learning across cultures.

Glad to see that you are an educator...

David Jakes