Talking Wikis

It’s no surprise in the K12 2.0 world, wikis are a hot way to go when collaborating with school peers, whether it’s for professional development or sharing projects with students from around the world. Take Mr. Bartels, a high school teacher in NC. He says wikis are a great way to improve communication with parents and share student work. He uses the free Wetpaint wiki tool, but there are plenty of other free wiki tools like PBwiki and WikiSpaces. Mr. Bartels explains why he likes wikis.

Why wikis & education?
With the current generation of students being more technologically savvy than ever before, digital space has become a viable and important tool for educators. Wikis supply digital publication without needing to have knowledge of coding or private server space. In other words, incredibly easily published web space.

It’s hard to explain to a parent why a student got a “B” on an essay when they can’t see the “A” students’ work. Well, now they can and they can see for themselves how students compare. It’s a real eye-opening experience for parents. The conversation then turns into, ‘how can I help my child versus why is he getting this grade.’ That’s huge.

Why Wetpaint wikis?
Creating and editing my Wetpaint classroom pages is just as easy as creating and editing a simple text document on my desktop. Wetpaint allows the user to decide how "open" he or she wants his or her page to be.