As part of our unit on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, we are setting up a Wiki site on our in district Blackboard. Working on a Wiki for the BCE PLS graduate course, inspired me to get my students to work on a Wiki as we put together our interactive multimedia project on the 7 Habits. Creating a Wiki as a group has many challenges: Timing, who does what, how much latitude to take as you make updates to someone else’s submission, how far to go in initiating new pages, etc. I learned that anyone can make changes and that if you do not like them you can discuss it in the discussion page. I also was happy to learn about restoring previous pages if you make a mistake to the page you are working on. Wiki’s are not as overwhelming as I thought when I first looked at it this week. Practice makes things go smoother.
I was surprised last Saturday when I brought up Web 2.0 technology at the lunch table with other SAT proctors. They were all resistent to the new additions to the district Blackboard page because they saw having to Wiki and Blog as a burden instead of a help. More training needs to be done so that they and others feel comfortable and move forward in their use of Wiki’s and Blogs. My response is always to ask for more staff development classes. We are actually, on Tuesday, having a class that will teach district staff about Wiki’s and Blogs that can be done within our Blackboard system. I plan to attend and learn as much as possible.
