My PMS Wiki!

I hope I have your attention now!

A number of years ago, I made some fabulous friends at the school where I worked. We started out simply as colleagues, but over the years of sharing the highs and lows of our professional lives, we developed a strong friendship. There are five of us in the initial core group. Others have come and gone, but the five of us still hold onto this bond. (By the way, the school’s initials are PMS, so we are “the PMS girls”!)

Over time things have changed for us and one-by-one we started to leave the school we taught at together. One left to live and teach in the country with her new husband; one was transferred to fill a need at another school; and next, it was my turn to leave on a maternity leave for a year and was relocated upon my return. In an interesting turn of events, this September, none of our original group will be at the original school, since another friend is now on a maternity leave and the “last” one is off on an amazing adventure to teach at an international school in Singapore for two years.

I have worked collaboratively with colleagues and friends before and since, but this group is my fall-back support group. They are the ones that I can turn to for a fantastic new idea, a new angle on an old idea, or, let’s be honest, for some useful “filler” activities for those times you simply don’t know what you will do with that room full of children waiting for you! We are now so spread out. How can we share our ideas – both the “oldie, but goodies” and the new, innovative ones? You must be able to see where I am going with this! Yes, a wiki!


Start with the basics - What is a Wiki?

A wiki is a collaborative website. Authoring rights can be given to individuals to edit and create data within the wiki.

Duffy and Bruns identify eight typical characteristics of wikis:

* A wiki is a website that allows a user to add content, but also allows that content to be edited by another user.
* Wikis can be personal, but are usually open to collaboration.
* They involve the creation of documents without detailed technical knowledge of HTML being required by the user.
* They tend toward expressing ideas as relationships between pages, thus creating a network of interrelated topics that is based on a ‘topical’ approach.
* Wikis are a-temporal; that is, the nodes (or interlinking textual references) change not according to time, but by way of development of evolving and edited text.
* They track the changes to individual pages over time and allow users to browse the development history of a page.
* They encourage cross-linking and are dominantly spatial in structure.
* Wikis provide a space where knowledge becomes networked (situated, contextualized) but remains ephemeral; it changes, and can be changed and mediated by the community.

I was interested to read on Wikipedia (a wiki, by the way) that the word wiki is Hawaiian for “fast” and a backronym (acronym created after-the-fact) for wiki is “what I know is”. What a perfect name for the tool!


My Exploration

I had a very basic understanding of wikis prior to this exploration, but I had used them. Like millions of other people, I’ve used Wikipedia to find information on various subjects, but I have never edited pages. For the past few years, my school division has been building a wiki of lesson plans and information to support major changes to the Manitoba Math Curriculum. I have viewed it, and as part of professional development, submitted lesson plans to be added. (Teachers lacked the ability to edit pages.) (I have not provided a link for this wiki because it requires a password to view.)

For my own wiki, I chose to use Wikispaces simply because earlier in EDES 501 when I was conducting a search for something else, I found a link to what I thought was a limited number of Wikispaces that were being provided to educators. Not wanting to miss this opportunity, I quickly signed up! I have since realized that it was not a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but decided to carry on with Wikispaces anyway! Not knowing what my wiki would be used for when I signed up, I simply used my blog title, Card Comments. My “error” in doing it this way quickly became apparent, once I started my wiki for my PMS friends. I easily found how to change the domain name in the “Manage Wiki” section and changed it to a more relevant title.

I watched the short “how to” videos in the Wikispaces’ help section and felt ready to dive in!

I chose a basic template and created my own, small logo (using directions for creating an image for my podcast third-party hosting site). I began to add data and quickly realized a different way to format the pages (not by person, but by subject) would make information more retrievable. I easily modified the page layout. I spent the next couple of hours weeding through files and bookmarks (thank you Delicious, for making that easier!) looking for a sampling of files and links to add. I had thought just to get going I’d add a variety.

To make sure I knew how to add pages to my wiki, I created two additional pages. I will continue to add data and I am hoping that my friends will add their own links and files to help develop a more extensive repertoire of resources.

I also created a simple profile page and will encourage my fellow PMS friends to do the same.

I learned the value of adding the optional information in the “Optional: a note about this edit for the page history log” box when editing! I was experimenting with various formats and often wanted to find previously saved pages. Sometimes had to load a few before I found the one I was looking for until I started adding a short memo about what I had edited during that session.

I surprised myself and really enjoyed playing with the wiki! In the interest of time, I had to stop myself from uploading more files, adding more links, and adding much more content to the wiki right then.

Although I enjoyed myself, I did have some difficulties. I am not sure if these difficulties were solely because of my inexperience or because of Wikispaces limitations.

One frustration I had was not being able to change the name of a page once it was saved. For example, the “English Language Arts” title was too long for one line, so I wanted to shorten it to ELA, but I couldn’t find a way to accomplish this.

I did manage to add files and links, but I was initially unhappy with the look of the formatting of the files on my wikipage. I managed to play with it and make it somewhat more appealing to me.

I also had some difficulties adding the link to files at times. Sometimes I was unsuccessful highlighting the text to add a link. I am not sure why this was happening, but I would eventually manage to add the link either by re-typing the text or starting the edit over. I reviewed the help video on adding files to see if I was doing something incorrectly, but did not appear to be. So, I muddled on!

All in all, I found the “wiki experience” a fun one! Check out my PMS Girls’ Wiki!


Implications for Teaching & Library

Collaboration - As obvious with the example I have created, collaboration with other colleagues is a tremendous benefit of this tool. Teachers/Librarians could collaborate with other teachers/librarians in their schools, divisions/districts, city, or, as I hope to, across the world! Students using wiki technology will also work collaboratively and because of how edits are recorded, it is easy to see who made what contributions to the compilation.

Accessibility – We have recognized that one of the benefits of social bookmarking sites is that it is accessible regardless of location, via the Internet. A wiki has the same accessibility. Even if my friends do not utilize this tool, I can still take advantage of it. I often do more extensive planning at home and then e-mail myself the files, so they are available on-line for me to use in my classroom, school computer lab, etc. However, that can make e-mail management a bit cumbersome and I can run into space limitations. If my files were housed in the wiki, they will be readily accessible to me (and my PMS friends).

Motivation to learn – “Everyone who contributes to the wiki has ownership and, as a result, is more invested in a project” (Schweder & Wissick, 2009, p. 57). As Will Richardson also notes, “implementations of wikis in educational settings have shown that the more autonomy teachers give to students in terms of negotiating the scope and quality of the content they are creating, the better” (p. 61).

Professional Development – Wikis can be used to share information and resources with peers. This may be done through conference presentations, personal websites, personal templates, or personal files. Users can benefit from another’s skill and knowledge for their own professional development.

Ease of Use – Because users do not have to have HTML knowledge or expertise to create a wiki, they are simple and easy to use. A basic wiki can be established without an abundance of time being spent learning the Web 2.0 tool, but an emphasis can be placed more on the content. A wiki website can be maintained locally, as opposed to more traditional websites that are often updated and maintained by a specific webmaster with specific programming knowledge.

Management – A library (or another work space) could develop and maintain a wiki to house information on various procedures, expectations, resources, etc that are important within that library. The ease and speed at which new information can be added (or edited) makes this a very applicable tool.


Great Examples:
In an article for the “Journal of Special Education Technology”, Wendy Schweder and Cheryl Wissick detail many different benefits to using wikis in educational settings.
For many of the benefits detailed in their article, they highlight a specific wiki (that can be publicly viewed) that utilizes wiki technology in that manner.

Curriculum planning – Lake and Peninsula School District Wiki
Encyclopedia for specific subjects – Planet Math
Conference presentations – Free Webtools
Sharing resources – The South Carolina Collaborative Assistive Technology Network
An educator’s personal website (wiki) - Joshua Zola’s Wikispace (school psychologist)
Sharing of created resources (i.e. spreadsheet templates) – Special Education Zone
Sharing thematic units – Section 40
Organization – Free Technology Toolkit (This one is worth checking out, even just for the formatting and great visual appeal!)
Classroom wikis – Mr. Cappello’s (Fabulous site for interacting with his students!)
Subject wikis – Book buddy reviews (I love this example because it involves young children!)


What’s Next?

* I will encourage my PMS friends to add to “our” wiki! I’ve already sent them an invite, but they may need a bit of a prod! At the time of writing this, the Singapore-bound PMS girl had signed on as a member. I hope this is just the beginning!

* I’d like to add more information (files, links, etc.) and more pages. I only added some items to confirm I had a basic understanding of how to develop the wiki, but to properly utilize this tool, it will need to be developed more extensively. I am rather excited to continue to build this site.

* As a future project for school, I’d like to try to create something like the Book Buddy Reviews. I was very excited to look at this wiki and see the application for young children! The relationships that developed between the Grade Four students and the Grade One students while working on this project would likely have been fabulous! As a Grade One classroom teacher, I have always partnered with an older grade for “Buddy Reading”, but this type of project would give much more substance to the time spent together and be a terrific opportunity for both grades to create an amazing end product. I am very excited by this possibility!


~ This is “Wiki-Niki”, signing off! ~


Additional Resources (not course required or hyperlinked):

Duffy, P & Bruns, A. (2006). The Use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Education: A Conversation of Possibilities. Proceedings Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, Brisbane, 31-38. Accessed from http://eprints.qut.edu.au

Schweder, W., & Wissick, C.. (2009). The Power of Wikis. Journal of Special Education Technology, 24(1), 57-60. Retrieved from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1797302621).