This week, one of the things we investigated in class is the use of Wikis. For the past few years, I allowed my students to use Wikipedia as a source of information for their work in my class. After investigating it more this week, I feel more comfortable with my decision to allow that. However, I am still going to continue to require students to cross check any information that they find with other sources. As I did as a kid when it was books, magazines and encyclopedias, I always had to cross check my sources. I continue to feel that Wikipedia is a good place to verify "big ideas." Although some of the information on the site might be false, the main topics seem to be concrete.
I am also interested in making a wiki for my civics class. I think it would be a great tool to have to gather all of my students thoughts into one central location. This year, I have tried a new way of teaching with my Civics students. I post questions on Moodle and have the students find the information on their own using the Internet. I'm able to do this because I have my class in a computer lab this year, so that helps. After they find the information, they put it into word or powerpoint and then put it into a shared folder. We then take a day to look at the info everyone got and discuss it. If move to using a wiki for class, the students can constantly see what others are posting and make changes as they see fit.
Your civics class sounds like a perfect opportunity to incorporate a wiki.
ReplyDeleteWhat would it take for you to be confident enough in Wikipedia to allow your students to use it as a stand alone source? Have your students ever come up with an example of erroneous info on Wikipedia and if so, have they gone in and changed it?
I think your idea of using a wiki is a good one. It will be especially powerful if you get the students to edit each other's work, or build on the research of others in the class. This cooperation will really help them see the benefit of wiki's, and enable them to help each other.
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