Chapter 4: Wikis

1). How does this reading impact you thinking about technology’s role in teaching and learning?

This reading about wikis brought my thinking about technology, specifically wikis, to a complete stop. Before this reading, I was not a huge fan of wikis, especially Wikipedia. My reason I disliked Wikipedia was mainly because my teachers in the past highly disliked it. When assigned a paper from my past teachers, which required resources, my teachers would specially indicate not to use Wikipedia or any wikis. The reason students were not allowed to use Wikipedia as a resource was because of the exact opposite reasons listed in the book; teachers said that it was not credible, wikis were open to anyone to edit and sometimes you receive false guidance for your research. I was completely turned against wikis due to my past experiences.
However, through this reading, my thinking was completely altered and brought to an abrupt stop. This reading helped me to understand that Wikis can be beneficial to individual’s learning. Yes, Wikis may have downfalls such as, the public is allowed to edit at anytime or “hackers” edit with wrong information, but in reality everything has its downfalls, especially technology (that’s why it is important to have a backup plan!). Also, before this reading I just thought there was a few wikis, I never realized how many different wikis there are that apply to a classroom setting or to educators.


2). What will you do differently as a future teacher as a direct result of this new thinking?
As a future teacher, I hope to probe the student’s thinking with technology. As a direct result of this new thinking, I will try my hardest to incorporate wikis into my classroom. My ideal job would be to teach at the second grade level, but any elementary grade would be great! Therefore, my only concern with this new thinking is, will it be able plausible at the younger ages, such as kindergarten, first, and/or second grade? During the early years of school, students are often growing in their cognitive abilities and basic motor skills thus; I think wikis would be too much for their learning skills.
On the other hand, if I was teaching at the third grade or a higher grade, I would be more apt to include wikis. One item that I would include in my future classroom is an online text. I believe having an online text would secrete less confusion in the class. Using a wiki for my classroom would allow my students to access it at home and also help out their students. My wiki would be a place for my students to get help from one another depending on the subject, and he or she could also get information from this wiki. My classroom wiki would be only open to my students, because I want to keep the information safe and reliable for them to refer to. What my classroom wiki would include is, objectives/rules for the class, guidance to help them on a certain problem, my students would be able to edit problems that would aide their students in the right direction of obtaining the correct answer, and multiple other things. I would also recommend this to my students’ parents or maybe make a wiki for my students parents. Having a wiki for students will allow me to get feedback and also communicate with parents more.
Using wikis in my future classroom(s) is something I am going to aide myself in doing.