Wikis represent the best way for students to collaborate with each other online.
The idea of everyone sharing knowledge via collaborative work on the internet using wikis or any source of social media is a radical departure from the educational model of the 20th Century. Like we’ve been saying ….the Read/Write web is changing the landscape of education and moving at such a rapid pace that those teachers who do no jump on the train called the “21st Century” are going to be left behind.
We now have a collaborative model of education that promises as Wikipedia says :
“nothing less than the liberation of human knowledge – both by incorporating all of it through the collaborative process, and by freely sharing it with everybody who has access to the internet”
I started using wikis in my classroom after seeing Vicki Davis, present at an ISTE conference two years ago. She teaches Business and Computer classes like I do and had many interesting ideas about wiki use for collaborative projects. Here is her site. Vicki is also known as the Cool Cat Teacher, an award winning educational blogger.
Initially I just added content to a professional learning community wiki called PA Keystone Technology Integrator. Then I used a wiki to enable teachers in my building to collaborate on a Schools To Watch initiative. Finally, I plunged in and created a class wiki for my students.
My students love learning this way and I enjoy having the time in class to work with small pull out groups and/or rotating between groups to facilitate rather than lecture. As a side note, teachers can safeguard class wikis by limiting access to only people invited to participate and by requiring student logins.
DASD K-12 Computer blog 