Wow! If all of us could have a Vicki Davis moment! Reading this amazing example of wiki learning definitely made me want to explore this “wiki wiki world”.

After exploring the wiki list, I found 3 to be really interesting. The first, Code Blue, was a really cute idea. I thought that the Yucky and Cool Body Systems link was great! Many kids want to ask questions about these topics, but are too embarassed. If you guide them to this site, they can check it out on their own.

The second, and MOST amazing, wiki I found really interesting was the Holocaust Wiki Project. While I believe that there is truly no way to understand the horror of the Holocaust, I believe this wiki was an excellent way to get your students to put themselves in “someone else’s shoes”. They had to think through each part (pros and cons) and guide you (the reader) through a family’s struggle by providing different decisions that had to be made. And, on another level, maybe it helped these students to realize that they can weigh the pros and cons of any situation in life to minimize the negative consequences…HIGH FIVE TEACHER!!!

The last wiki I found to be really interesting was the Room 15 Wiki. There were many parts of this wiki I thought were great. The first (which I think I would have really benefitted from in school) was the Help! Room. Here, students can have a live tutorial. The second part I really enjoyed was the Book Review. A teacher can recommend a book all day long, but if that same opinion/recommendation comes from another child, the kid is 10 times more likely to read it! 

The only complaints I have about these wikis would be the layout. Can they not be made more visually appealing like web pages? I bet they can, it’s probably really involved though..

By reading through these wikis I have a few ideas of things I’d like to implement in my classroom…

1. A Mini Research Project where the students create a wiki exploring the 5 Regions of the United States and make up questions (from their information) for their classmates to answer. 

2. Instead of giving “Book Talks/Book Reports”, have the students do a Book Review online. Then, the rest of the class would have an online tool to read books recommended by others. I might have to make them be specific to make sure that they actually read the book though…