Having A Wiki Good Time.....

This week I was introduced to the concept of wikis and how they could be integrated into the classroom environment. After looking into several wiki tools that are available, I was quite impressed by Wikispaces. When exploring their site, I found many appealing features including the fact that educators can create free spaces that can be private. I also really like how user friendly this site was and how it offered video tutorials to show a new user how to create their own wiki space. Of all things we did this week, I was really excited by the prospect of creating a Wikispace for my U.S. history classes next year as a controlled environment outside of the classroom that will facilitate student collaboration.

In addition to learning and understanding how I might integrate the use of wikis into my teaching, I also think that photo sharing could be used in my classroom next year if I created a project where they had to document something in their lives in a way that forced them to “think like an historian” and maybe document aspects of their life, which would be part of history. Instead of telling a typical story with words, students could use images. Of the sites, I really thought that Flickr and Picasa and Picasa Web Albums were sites that were easy to understand and operate. One thing that I found to be really interesting in the Picasa and Picasa Web Albums was the way that users could easily add geo-tags to their photos so that they can remember exactly where they're from using Google Maps. I could see that being a neat story telling tool if, for example, my students were doing a photo project either on their hometown or even stories of historical events in their hometown. A map and picture would make the project likely more engaging and informative.