#wikis and other web 2.0 tools that can support your wiki

Chapter 7 of Stephanie Sandifer's book Wikis for School Leaders is all about how other common web 2.0 tools can be used to help support your school's wiki.  The first thing that they suggested to use to help support and make your wiki easier to use were all things Google (as Dr. Krug would approve of).  She mentioned how easy it was to have multiple people work on one document and also just that it was sometimes more user friendly for people who aren't very good with wikis to just put something in a google document and put that in the wiki.  They also mentioned that if you were to use something such as a google presentation you could embed it into the wiki or in serval wikis and then when you edit the original it will automatically update the versions embedded in the wikis.  It is super easy to use for effective collaboration on a variety of projects.  They also mentioned subscribing to RSS feeds and blogs that can help make your wiki more up to date and efficient.  For those that are really up to date with their technology use the author of the book even suggested things like following other educators on twitter who would be able to provide you with links to helpful resources and give input on ideas.  This chapter was essentially saying that a wiki is meant to be expanded and connected to other forms of web 2.0 which will help it run better and more efficiently.  I personally found this chapter to be helpful because I'm more familiar with the way to implement and use most of the web 2.0 tools that they mentioned it just seemed easier and less intimidating for me to think about implementing in my own classroom one day or even help start it's use in my future school.  Overall this book had a lot of good ideas and it was easy to follow and gain a lot of information from.

If you build it, they will collaborate.... or maybe they won't?

*This blog entry is in response to chapter 5, "How?- Making It Work in Your Organization", from the book Wikis for School Leaders by Stephanie D. Sandifer

Building a wiki is just the first part of integrating it's use in your classroom.  You have to actually teach people how to use it and have an effective way of teaching people about it.  In terms of getting people to use the wiki that you have created and embrace the technology presented to them can be a daunting task because you have a wide variety of technological backgrounds and it is hard to make sure that they all can understand and embrace it.  This chapter had a list of do and don'ts for organizing your wiki and I found a lot of the things mentioned very helpful.  They mentioned how important it is to allow access to the wiki outside of school or district intranet, i.e. make it so people can use it even when they're not at school.  They also suggested allowing small groups of people to create their own wiki so they can play around with it and become more comfortable on using wikis and in turn help teach others about how useful they can be.  Be sure that when people have successes in using wikis or learning about wikis that you reward them in some way or highlight their extra effort, don't let participation or learning go unnoticed.  Let the people who you are trying to get to use the wiki work together and give feedback on things that they like or that could be improved.  Also be willing to go the extra mile and really teach those users who may be digital immigrants about all the things they need to know to help them be a better wiki user.  You also need to be sure that you don't take the experience of some users for granted.  Don't abuse your resources and also don't expect that just because your users may be tech savvy on some subjects that they will grasp this new technology.  Be patient with your users and be sure that the guidelines you set for this wiki are not too restrictive the people using the wiki need to be able to use it effectively and not have a million restrictions holding them back.
I think the biggest thing that I learned in this chapter is that to make a wiki be an effective tool you need to have a clear, well-defined vision before you present to the people you want to use it.  If you don't have a clear vision they can't have one either.  Also you need to be sure that you have workshops or step-by-step instructions available to give out to those people who may not be as technologically savvy but are willing to try.  Make it as easy as possible for people to learn and become involved in the use of wiki as possible, the easier it is the more people will be willing to give it a try.

When in Doubt Wiki.

I recently read the fourth chapter in the book Wikis for School Leaders by Stephanie Sandifer.  This chapter was all about when and where to use a wiki in the context of leadership and specifically in a school setting.  One of the first things that she said was that Wikis should never contain personal information or important data about the teachers or students.  It is important to realize that wikis like other things on the internet can never really be 100 percent secure especially when you  have a large amount of people who have access to various wikis that you may be using.  They also suggested that wikis be used as a sort of memo instead of using meetings to get information out to certain people, they said that wikis would be better used for instead of meeting time when people could be getting work or other things done.  Following suit with using wikis as a form of memos they also suggested simply embedding a link to the wiki with daily updates instead of attaching word documents or pdf files that get bulky and can clog up a person's email.  This is a more simple solution to keeping computers running more efficiently and it makes it more likely that everyone will look at the information trying to be conveyed.
 
They also used this chapter to talk about how wikis can be used as a form of professional development.  They not only allow the users to create personal profiles where their employers can look and use the information displayed on that page to create teams to work on certain projects or see who is more involved in the workplace and who may not be as involved.  Along with that they mentioned using wikis for PLCs (Professional Learning Communities).  Wikis can be used as a way for professionals to communicate with one another especially when their may not be another teacher who works in their speciality area at that school, it allows teachers to communicate with in a district.  They also can be used for storing lesson plans and sharing curriculum mapping ideas with other teachers.  Basically wikis allow educators to share information more effectively and efficiently than something like email would do.