Week 7 - Thing 16

I have had a tiny bit of experience using a wiki prior to this exercise. The librarians in our distict created one to share, add, and edit information for a document that we wanted to present to the board in regards to a new superintendent. As I was looking through all of the examples that were listed for us, the first thing I noticed was the issue of security. Passwords were needed to edit and even one needed and email confirmation to be able to edit. I guess you really need to think about the people that you want to have access to the wiki and how they will be able to use it. I enjoyed reading through Library Success: A Best Practice Wiki. There were so many areas to go into and read. I especially enjoyed Keeping Up With the Profession. Once again, I used my del.icio.us account to bookmark. I also read quite a bit in Providing Technology to Patrons and the one called Collaborative Tools in Libraries. Another wiki that I found very interesting was the Library Bloggers wiki. I clicked on school libraries and found that some of the links no longer are active and that it is just a wiki of school blogs. I guess I was hoping to see how elementary schools used wikis. The Sample school wiki got me interested in the Flat Classroom Project that I found out about in the secion called Classroom 2.0. I then went off on my own search to read and learn all about that project. How cool!

I really have to think how I would used this tool effectively with elementary school students. First of all, their spelling and punctuation would cause me to do a lot of editing. I'm also wondering how you control the appropriateness of what is placed on the page. I know with a blog you can set it to be approved before the comment is posted. Can that also be done with wiki entries? I can definitely see it as a tool for teachers to use to collaborate on numerous topics. I would love to hear ideas of how it is used effectively with elementary students.