Wikis in the Classroom

After spending quite a bit of time this week making mistakes on my wiki, trying to fix them, sending frantic messages on the discussion board about how to find my original text--why isn't there an undo button at the top of the wiki page?--I have decided that I just want to go to Hawaii!! Ahhh, but seriously, I can see using a wiki for purposes of putting the day's lessons on it, writing the day's homework assignment, posting charts and graphs and explanations that can be accessed easily by students and parents alike. Other purposes might include creating a class writing where every student is required to contribute a few sentences to a paper or poem or help edit a sample paper. It would be a great place to show exemplars so that students would know what they are to be creating with a piece of writing. Perhaps each class period could have its own wiki which is accessible to only that class and students could turn in assignments in the wiki. I read a wiki, that I can no longer find, that was about literature circles. I have used literature circles in the past and have loved them, but have found the sheer numbers of students I now have make them really difficult to orchestrate. If each group had their own wiki and could post their writings as they read, that might be a way to use it. I'm just writing as I think, so these are random ideas not clearly defined.

The biggest block for me and a classroom wiki is how to manage student use. I watched Richard Buckland's video where he explained how he used it in his class, and he spoke about the "wiki nature" often. He taught college level students. I cannot yet wrap my head around how to use it for high school students. Sometimes it seems a blog would be more useful because it cannot be changed except by the administrator, and if I would put a block on a wiki site so that only I could change the text, then what would be the point of a wiki at all? I even asked some of my students how they thought a wiki might be used in class, but they were a little unclear and said, “Wikipedia? It’s great!” But when I explained what a wiki was, that Wikipedia was not the only one out there, they looked a little puzzled and weren’t sure either. However, I have some really bright students who will probably have some ideas for me next week.

At the moment, with the wiki I created for this class about writing a character analysis, I don't think I would have any expectations for students to contribute. When we read and annotate short stories in class, could I have students annotate the story on the wiki and then print the annotations for the entire class? Would that increase the quality of their work, or would most students just allow the over-achievers to create all the notes?

Clearly I have far more questions than answers, but I spend quite a bit of time pondering how I might use this tool in the future.