Thing 17

I think the Wikki is different from a blog because actual changes and additions can be made to the page where as a blog can only be commented on. This has both good and bad results as the info is only as good as the poster. This is what has lead to the creation of sites like snopes.com to check out info. Students tend to believe any info that is posted, we need to teach them to be more discerning readers as with the newspaper, everything can be slanted with a bias of some sort. Wikki's would be great for collaborative projects that need a final presentation. The teacher can go through the history info to track what students participated and to what extent. Information could be verified by various methods, students in the project and the teacher. Blogs could be useful to develop a dialogue on a given topic where opinions are encouraged. This could be another form of debate with older students . At the elementary level I could see issues with this due to keyboarding skills, spelling, and vocabulary. I think the research topics on a Wikki would better suit our current curriculum topics. The issue with Wikki at the elementary level is going to be screening, filtering information that is appropriate for students. When students research their topics, unfortunately, there are always in appropriate materials, photos, and links attached to otherwise quality materials. There is also the oops factor which happens due to their lack of keyboarding skills. Filters, site permissions, capability of the hardware and software at the elementary level is also going to be an issue. Students have limited storage capacity, external flash drives have not been permissible, and access to advanced software available at the MS and HS has not yet been made available. I have reviewed the Tech GLCE's for Upper Elem. students and there are some of these that can only be met through use of the teacher log in and the "teacher's computer" in the gen. ed classroom and not in the lab as these computers have more limited capabilities. I am planning to get around some of these issues with the acquisition of the 3M Infinity System for my classroom as the students can then work on my log in and permissions in a way that I can readily monitor through the projection system.