Why Wiki?

Until recently, I didn't have much experience with wikis, other than Wikipedia. I knew that wikis provided a collaborative and interactive writing platform, but I hadn't really thought about them being used in school settings. Although I'm becoming more aware of the ways that wikis can be used with students, at this point, I'm much more drawn to the idea of using wikis in schools as a platform for collaboration and information sharing among administrators, teachers, and staff.

In her July 2009 post, "8 Ways to Use a School Wiki to Increase Communication, Collaboration, and Enrich Instruction,"  Lisa Nielson (The Innovative Educator) describes how wikis can cut down on paperwork, increase instructional time, and significantly improve curriculum mapping and planning, among many other things! As I read this post, I found myself saying, "Yes! This is what we need!" after every example she gave.

I played a significant role in updating our elementary school's ELA curriculum maps for the latest ELA evaluation by the Board of Ed.  Currently, our maps are saved in a "Teacher Share Drive" on our server, which all teachers can access. I even showed the ELA mapping committee how to "link" lesson plans to the maps using hyperlinks within MS Word. Everyone was very impressed with the linking feature, but the problem is, our "teacher share drive" has become ridiculously unorganized and inundated with files and most people can't remember how to get to the maps! Even if teachers do navigate their way to the maps or lessons, they are merely MS Word documents, and don't have any of the discussion or collaboration features of a wiki. If someone accidentally makes an unwanted change, its very difficult to undo it and we have to wait for the BOCES tech to come and try to retrieve it from the file logs.

Wikis could be a breath of fresh air for our curriculum mapping. Teachers could add their comments and thoughts through the discussion feature, and changes could be tracked, logged, and "undone" if necessary. Everyone could upload and add their resources for each unit to one place, with a place for comments, feedback, and reflection (which I think is one of the most valuable features). Additionally, teachers could access and add to this valuable information from home (which we aren't able to do currently). With real-time collaboration, teachers could really benefit from sharing resources and experiences, and save themselves from re-inventing the wheel. This article makes me want to sign up for the next available workshop for "Bringing wikis into your school."

Convincing the administration that its a good idea and getting teachers on board...? That might take some more effort, but I know that it will be a much-needed step in the right direction.