Ideas on using wiki in the classroom.

Wiki is a very powerful resource to teach with technology. I would call it the “All in a box” technology. Wiki help not only the students but the teacher as well, because it allows you to have every aspect of your course well structured. Wiki brings a lot of collaboration into the table; your students can use it as a 1-stop shop, where they can share information with their classmates on what they have learned in the course.

Wikis have several advantages over other Web 2.0 technologies, one of them is that is free, very user-friendly, there is no need to download anything in your computer, and all you need to know is how to use MS Word, if you know how to use MS Word than you can easily setup a wiki site for your classroom. Our role as instructors is to engage and get our students motivated. Students love technology, so we can take advantage of that and use technology to teach.

One way of using wiki in the classroom would be to create a project and have a wiki as the main resource to share their ideas. Forming teams and making use of the “Discussion” tab would help you to track who has been collaborating with the project and who has not. Another way of using wiki in your classroom is to list resources and links of websites related to your field, you could assign a group of student to check some websites that they think they are relevant to the course have them write a report on why they choose them and a brief paragraph describing each source.

One way of using wiki in the classroom would be to create a project and have a wiki as the main resource to share their ideas. Forming teams and making use of the “Discussion” tab would help you to track who has been collaborating with the project and who has not. Another way of using wiki in your classroom is to list resources and links of websites related to your field, you could assign a group of student to check some websites that they think they are relevant to the course have them write a report on why they choose them and a brief paragraph describing each source.

Another way to use wiki in the classroom is to use the wiki as a FAQ page. You could even make it a class project and assign them to create an FAQ page related to your subject. Have them explore and answer the questions, because they will be sharing and learning from the same FAQs. You could also use your wiki as a Calendar to post exam dates, quizzes, holidays or any other school event.

Here some other ideas on Using wikis in the classroom.