WIKIed Awesome

source: flickr.com

                                                                          
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of  all human knowledge. That's what we're doing" -Jimmy Wales Wikipedia founder
(Richardson, page 55.)

That's a pretty bold boast, but as one can see from the table above the use of Wikis in the professional word increased more than fivefold during the two years from 2008-2010.  For educators Wikis would seem to provide a vehicle for constant class participation and collaboration among students. The possibilities would seem to be endless. As a cynic by nature I have a few reservations about this new tool. For example, what parameters would be placed upon student participation and contributions to classwide Wikis? How would participation be assessed? How can one ensure that authentic learning is taking place? How good are these projects?

A search of the web yielded some interesting answers to those queries.  A few teachers at Estanica High School in California are piloting something called the Aristotle Experiment. It is based upon the assumption that anything that needed to be taught could probably best be learned by the students themselves, therefore (hopefully) shifting the focus of the class from the teacher to the student. One can find links to participating classes, assessment rubrics, and online discussions on the site.

What about evaluating student learning via Wikis or even introducing a Wikiproject to students. Here is a pretty good guide/rubric to help students get started with digital group projects. With regard to grading group Wikiprojects, the site flatclassroomproject offers host of suggested rubrics that can be tailored to the specific content and grade level of the classroom. Both of these tools are pretty sound and there are a plethora of resources on the web.

Finally, as I wondered about the quality of the projects completed by groups of students I found numerous examples of sophisticated and intricate work done by student sin many disciplines. For example, this biology project was extremely thorough.  Here's a really good history fair project which pretty much makes story boards look obsolete. In the true spirit of a flat classroom here's a history project that was done jointly by eighth graders from schools in Michigan and Colorado during the 2007-2008 school year. This is incredible.