Integrating Technology in the Second Language Classroom

  
Jean LeLoup & Bob Ponterio 
SUNY Cortland 
© 2015

What's a Wiki ?

You know about Wikipedia, but just what is a wiki anyway? Do Wiki's have a place in your clasroom?

A wiki is an online space that looks like a web page. The difference is that visitors can add and edit the space. You can keep track of changes and who made changes. This makes a wiki an interesting tool for collaboration and for communication.

Video overview of wikis from Common Craft (https://www.commoncraft.com/video/wikis)

There are many services that provide a space where individuals can create and manage their own wiki. One popular service for free wikis for K-12 classroom teachers is wikispaces:

http://www.wikispaces.com/content/classroom

Wikispaces provides free wikis for anyone, but k-12 teachers can get a free wiki without ads that is closed to all except the students in the class. This addresses several concerns about sending students to online spaces that might be outside the teacher's control.

In order to explore how a wiki works, we will collaborate as a class to develop an overview of what is important for teachers to know about the Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia. The wiki space below has been set up for ICC 523:

http://icc523.wikispaces.com/

Read and edit the page. Add new information in your own words (no plagiarism please!) Also modify/improve what others have written. n.b. This is NOT a blog for talking about personal feelings, it is to be a short introduction to basic copyright information that a new teachers should know. Think of this as collaborative writing. By adding new information and improving what others have written, the final result should be better than any of us writing alone.

Examine the history to see what others have changed, and make comments about the process or share opinions in the discussion thread. Be sure to leave your name in comments so I can see who made which changes!


For more about wikis:



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