Thing #8 Wiki Wiki What?

Well I have been doing this assignment for the last two nights...and I think I am still a little confused about wikis. I mean yes..I understand that "it's a really easy way to make a website", but I guess I had a hard time navigating around some of them. I think unless the main home page has anything of interest on it..they lose me in all the links and tabs. I never knew if I was really getting the main idea or not.

For example I really felt lost in 1001 Flatworld Tales. I would click on something and I would be reading a story and then I wasn't sure where to go from there. I think that it was just a website with many students stories posted on it. Some were actually pretty good. Time consuming and fun if you knew the students I guess.

I really enjoyed several others though. I thought Kindergarten Counting was very cute, but the photography needed improving for it to really work. A lot of the photos were out of focus, or had busy backgrounds. Several shots were just too far away and would have been better if the subject had been closer. But the idea of the wiki was adorable. I think the idea of starting kindergartners on computers is wonderful. Salute to Seuss was enjoyable and simple.

Primary Math was great..you could tell the students really enjoyed the process. The patterns section was particularly cute. But my favorite was Schools in the Past. What a great way to get the students talking to their Grandparents. Older people like nothing better than reminiscing over their child hoods..and young people need to hear about their heritage...how their parents and grandparents lived.

I learned the most from Wiki Wiki Teaching of course. Cool Cat Teacher..is one cool teacher. Her students are to be envied. I hope they understand how very special she is! I loved the story about her overhearing students in the hallway squealing about adding English notes to their wiki..when is the last time you heard student excited about learning or studying anything? So yeah..that was pretty great. I especially loved number 3. in her original assignment; ask yourself what don't you understand yet about the topic you are investigating and research some more until you do understand and record your findings..I think that is so key in everything about the computer! So that was worth the whole assignment!

As far as creating my own wiki...I think it is something I would like to play with for sure. I think that it would be fun for long distance family members to keep in touch with each other...I think especially if you could load music and photos and even voices..yeah that could be really fun. Grandkids could play their violin solo for their grandparents and a message to NY from TX. Other family from Atlanta could add their soccer pictures and scores from their latest game etc. for all to see. I could really run with this if wikis did all that :)

Ok....I'm out!