Why You Need a Wiki

This page is an expanded outline of a presentation to be delivered at the 76th annual Kentucky Council of Teachers of English/Language Arts conference, held in Lexington, Kentucky. For comments or questions, please e-mail Mrs. Clark at [mailto:micki.clark@hopkins.kyschools.us micki.clark@hopkins.kyschools.us]

Websites are more than your business card.
As a former student that grew up embracing technology, it annoys me when I go to the Web looking for information and find a Website that's little more than an expanded business card. What, precisely, is the point of paying to upload information that I can find in a phone book (or at Whitepages.com)? Too many teachers have websites that don't go beyond the first page, and many others have websites that still happily proclaim "Welcome back, students! 2004 will be a great year!"

In short, you need to create a classroom Web presence that your students will actually utilize, or there's no point in having one at all.

A good classroom site will include things like:
 * multiple contact methods (school address, phone number, e-mail address, Twitter ID)
 * links to resources you use in class
 * copies of materials distributed in class
 * your Twitter feed, if you use it

A classroom site should be an extension of your classroom (in other words, you can have all this...and more!) To put it simply, if there's nothing helpful on your site, the students will never visit it, and you've wasted your time.

Your students are seeking out answers online.


At this moment, there are over 5,400 open (unanswered) homework help questions posted on Yahoo! answers. Your students are using Web and mobile based services like ChaCha, Yahoo! answers, and Gradegigs.com.

Let's consider this. Do you really want your students to go to the Internet and get help from a user named "Feisty" or "I'm With Stupid?"

The point is that your students, in this digital age, go straight to a computer, iPad, or smartphone when they don't know how to do something. Why not make sure they are going to a source that will help them learn the answer rather than simply spit it out for them?

Parents expect to stay informed in a digital age.
Gone are the days when parents are content to ask their child "What did you do today?" I have parents e-mail me, message me on Facebook, you name it. Parents expect to know exactly what's going on in your classroom at any given time. If Junior misses class, they expect you to be able to provide him with his homework the same day so he can come in with it completed the next.

You're teaching digital citizenship.
Digital citizenship means that you are teaching your students the rules of contributing responsibly to the Internet (including interactions on social media sites). Digital citizenship lessons can (and should) include rules of decorum in communications and postings, ways to post responsibly while still protecting privacy, and other such things.

Teaching your students how to responsibly edit a wiki and preserve the contributions of their classmates while correcting inaccuracies is an important example of digital citizenship.

You're demonstrating the value of authenticating sources.
I'll admit it--one of the first things I tell my students when we begin a research project of any sort is that Wikipedia is the devil.

Of course, I'm joking, and the students get that, but they also understand the underlying message I'm trying to convey. A page on Wikipedia is only as accurate as the person that edited it (and the sources they used). Just because it says something online does not make it so. Teaching them firsthand about how a wiki is created will help them comprehend that lesson much better than my snarky little phrase.

You are giving students an authentic purpose/audience.
I used to hate scoring writing portfolios where students had cobbled together random travel brochures or some similar assignment just to have an entry from "a class other than English." A wiki entry can give students an authentic purpose and a real audience (and they generally do a much better job when they know someone is watching).

A wiki is a great research project.
Again, you're giving students an authentic assignment for an authentic purpose. Giving them a specific, structured research assignment is a good way to build toward other skills relating to research (such as writing a research paper). Here, they know they are looking for specific information, and they are required to use skills such as paraphrase, restatement, and citation of sources.

Students learn best when teaching others.
We'll get into this a bit more below, but the reality is that students don't always learn best with the way we teach. Research tells us that one of the best ways to learn material is to teach it. A wiki isn't exactly the same as a face-to-face tutoring session, but students are using the material they've learned to "present a lesson" to their classmates.

What sort of materials can I post on a wiki?
You name it, you can post it. Examples include:

YouTube videos
You can record videos and post them on YouTube explaining a certain concept your students struggle with. For those of you familiar with the flipped classroom concept, this is an easy way to keep them organized.

From the page on meter:

Pictures and Diagrams
I teach sentence diagramming with grammar, and most students have never diagrammed a word in their lives. I took pictures of the posters on my wall and posted them online for student reference. You can also take screenshots on your computer or use a smartphone or digital camera to take pictures of examples you've done on the board to post for your students.



Handouts, Notes, Quiz Reviews
If you've set up your wiki to allow it, you can also upload documents for your students to print out at home. This is essential to me. Over the last ten years, I have gotten increasingly frustrated by students' apparent inability to retain pieces of paper handed to them. Finally, I stopped running extra copies and just made a policy: if you want/need another copy, you'll have to print your own. This is also a great step to a paperless classroom.

Use it as a Sage on a Stage (least effective)
Every now and then, we're all guilty of being a sage on a stage. It's what comes most natural to many teachers--I know the information, you don't, so why don't I just tell you the answers, you write them down, study them, and spit them back out later?

You can always use a wiki to record, much as I am doing now, your lectures for students so they may review them at their leisure (again, good for a flipped classroom). However, how can you be sure that your students will seek out your lectures online when they didn't pay attention to your captivating lecture in class? Sure, some students will go to your site instead of Random Website #2,837 to look up the answers, but a lot more will just ignore it completely.

It's an effective method, because there's always that one student that will use it, but it's not going to give you the most "bang for your buck."

Use it for Teacher-Student Interaction (more effective)
A more effective use for your wiki is to allow students to post questions (and, potentially, answers) on pages. This is something new I am experimenting with, but the premise is a basic one: you're teaching a complex topic. Your students don't understand. Rather than each of them e-mailing you separately (and composing 115 separate responses in turn), you can set up a wiki page allowing them to post questions. Your entire class can benefit from seeing the questions asked and answered, and you've also got the option of awarding extra credit to students that can correctly answer a classmate's posed question.

There are many ways you can experiment with this, but it provides you with more transparency than allowing students to message you on Twitter or Facebook, and you've got the added bonus of additional review for the rest of your class. How many times have you sat and waited for someone else to ask a question because you didn't want to ask a "silly" question? Your students are no different.

You may also consider posting study guides on a wiki with blanks, so your classes can fill them in for extra credit.

Use it for Student-Student Interaction (most effective)
We all know that one of the best ways to cement the learning of new material is to teach it to someone else. To me, this is one of the most valuable ways my students can use a wiki.

In our school, students are required to complete independent reading assignments and a Major Works Data Sheet each trimester. Invariably, students come ask me which books I think they will like, which I have read, et cetera. I always struggle with this, because there aren't many books on the list I don't like/see the value of. After all, if I hated literature, I wouldn't teach English.

I now require my students to complete a wiki entry for their novels (or, if the page already exists, for the author or some other related topic). As a result, I have a collection of pages their classmates can visit to learn about the plot of a potential selection (and whether or not their friends liked reading it). They are also "teaching" their classmates about the book, filling in many of the same sections as the Major Works Data Sheet.

What's funny to me is that I have had students tell me how much they love doing the wiki (and how much they hate completing the MWDS), when the wiki pages actually ask for MORE information than the MWDS does. It's all a matter of perception.

How do students learn to use a wiki?
Realistically, a lot of this depends on the type of wiki you use and the level of your classes. For most of you, you're looking at one session in the computer lab (at a minimum) to help them get started, and then probably some follow-up sessions here and there.

If you're playing sage, then there's very little learning curve. Navigate to the site, put your terms in the search box, and read what I said. Ta-da. Requiring students to be able to edit or create pages will require a bit of time put in on your part to teach students the technology. I made a video of myself creating a random page to post on my Wiki so students would have the basics outside of the computer lab setting. I also gave them a handout of instructions to use (formatting guidelines, et cetera).

Understand that there is a learning curve--more advanced classes may be able to see it once and get it completely. Slower or younger classes may need more guidance initially.

How do I grade a wiki?
How do you grade anything else? Grading a wiki's no different.

First, decide how you will be using the wiki. Establish a rubric from there. When I ask my students to create wikis for their IRA (independent reading) novels, I require that they complete a certain number of sections. Their grade is based upon how complete each of these sections are, whether or not they have correctly cited their sources, and how many GSP errors the entry contains.

How you grade is entirely up to you, but be sure to make it clear to your students what you are looking for before they start working. Have some samples of quality work (and maybe a sample or two of work that needs improvement) to show them.

How do I get a wiki?
You have two basic options: use a service to host it, or host it on your own site/server. There are many free services available, including [Wikispaces].

Personally, I chose to host mine on my own site. I want complete control and access over what's uploaded at all times. To do so, I installed [MediaWiki] on my site. This software is the same as was originally written for use on Wikipedia, and is used by many other wikis. To me, an added benefit of doing this is that my students will be able to contribute to Wikipedia should they ever choose to do so.

Legalese
In many districts (mine included), there are special policies governing student use of Web 2.0. Most of these policies require permission from the principal and a signed permission form from the parents. Cover your bases and be sure your district permits Web 2.0-based sites to be used in the classroom.

Additionally, remember that the Internet is a very public place. Use this as an opportunity to teach your students about protecting their identity online, and don't allow them to overshare private or potentially identifying information.