MY WIKI EXPERIENCE

When I began with this subject in October 2011, I thought I never managed to do something on my own. But now in December 2011 I am very surprised at everything I have learnt and at the possibilities web 2.0 has. For me this subject has been a great challenge, because I have never heard of web 2.0 in general, and of wiki in particular.

Obviously, I did not know what a wiki was, and once I have studied how it works I have realized the advantages and the disadvantages this tool has. One of the most important advantages of this resource is that teachers and students can share a page dealing with a specific subject, in which all of them can add the materials they think the rest can benefit. Another advantage is that you have the possibility of establishing discussions among students, and between students and visitors. One disadvantage could be that these sites usually deal with one concrete subject and students will not share two subjects or themes in the same wiki.

I think, from my point of view, a wiki is a very useful tool in the educational environment. I, as a future teacher of English, can open a group wiki with my students and improve our English through it. I consider that Google Calendar could be a very interesting tool to apply in our wiki, because parents can control their children´s work and both of them, students and parents, can see deadlines and exams dates among other things. I also think that any tool to make photo music videos, such as Animoto, can be very amazing, and students could learn in a more attractive way.

As a brief conclusion, I consider that a wiki is a very revolutionary tool which nowadays is probably improving the future of education all around the world.

VIDEO: WIKIS IN PLAIN ENGLISH

MY FAVOURITE EMBEDS FOR EDUCATIONAL WIKIS AND BLOGS

Google Calendar is a quite interesting tool to embed in our wiki. The most important advantage of this tool is that parents can view the calendar on your page or if the page is public they can subscribe to it, so they can know everytime what their children have to study and what their homework is. Parents can control their children´s work. This is a quite useful tool in order to mark class events and major deadlines among other things. It could be a good way of organizing the course. To find the embed code follow these directions.


Another relevant tool to take into account could be Slideshare. This tool allows us to convert our PowerPoint presentations into the embeddable slideshows. This tool can be very useful, from my point of view, to embed different slideshows in our wikis, so students can see these presentations and learn more about the subject.


An amazing tool which help us to make photo music videos is Animoto. To create a video is very easy, and once we have created it, it can be embbeded on our wiki or blog. Web 2.0 has a lot of possibilities, and this one is very representative in order to encourage our students to study and to improve in a very atrractive way, through music and images. At the same time and with the same activity, students learn and enjoy themselves.

 

MY OPINION ON DIFFERENT EDUCATIONAL WIKIS

ONE CLASSROOM WIKI: LATIN WIKI

Obiously this wiki is about Latin and it is a group wiki. The Latin´s teacher and students can edit the wiki. In this wiki students can organize their latin knowledge and create intesting material which everyone can use. At first sight it seems that this wiki is very well organized and it has a very large amount of information, since it has a lot of pages dealing with the learning of Latin. In the discussion section, which is very large, there are a lot of interventions and questions made by students, and this can be very useful for the subject´s improvement. 

TWO STUDENTS CREATED WIKIS:

CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY ENGINEERS HOME

This wiki was created at the Concordia University and it helps students in order to do exams. Students at this University or others can edit this wiki. I think this wiki is very useful for students, because they can share their exams and help them in order to prepare them. The fact that in the first page students had useful links to other similar sites seems also very useful. The page entitled Sample Exams is very well organized since the exams are distributed by subjects, and students can find easily the exams they are looking for.

PROFESSIONAL WRITINGS

This wiki has the material and the information of how to write a professional essay. Essentialy students can edit it, but any person who was interested in this topic also can. At first sight the presentation is very attractive, because of the images and the mixture of colours, but when you move through it you realize, from my own point of view, that it has too much information and this can be a disadvantage. The first page is very long and it has a lot of pages, 25 to be exact, and this can be chaotic when you are looking for a very specific information. 

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF EDUCATIONAL WIKIS:

USING WIKIS IN THE CLASSROOM

As the title of the wiki says this wiki is about how to use wikis in the classroom. Overall teachers are the people who can edit it, although any person can do it. From my point of view this site is very interesting since the participants will be introduced to the easy-to-use world of wikis and to the large number of possibilities this tool has in the classroom. I also consider that this wiki could be very interesting for me and my fellows as future English teachers. A good aspect of this wiki is that it is focused on new teachers and participants who are not got used to these concrete tools. Ii begins with the description and construction of a wiki.