Thing #15

I am pretty late to the wiki game as compared to most people. I remember back in 04-05 when I was a senior in college hearing professors joke about Wikipedia not being a scholarly source and I had no idea what they were talking about. I was never a big Googler until about 2 years ago, where of course I became intimately familiar with all things Wikipedia because Wiki is usually the first search result on the page. My husband is HUGE into Googling and it has really rubbed off on me. I'll find myself Googling or Wiki-ing odd phrases or references I hear on tv or read in a magazine, or that 1/2 a song lyric that I heard in the grocery store and now I must know the rest of the song. Anyway, until I did this exercise I wasn't really clued into how huge wiki applications have gotten. I had never gone much beyong Wikipedia so this was pretty eye-opening for me. I love how easy it is to edit an entry, and I know students would love it too. As a teacher, I appreciate the fact that I can monitor all changes to a class wiki and see the different versions of the entries at they evolve. It's a great way to keep students accountable without them having to turn in paper after paper. I really liked the AP US History wiki project that I looked at. It encouraged the students to make concise entries using bullet points whenever possible. This exercise does a great job of mimicking what the students are required to do on the AP Test. I hadn't thought of setting up a wiki for a class assignment but this seems really simple and is an excellent way to combine the benefits of group work with benefits of independent work.