Thing 14

Wild about Wikis! I think as with anything, we are always scared to start something. Just like Vicki Davis' blog. Our students will be so excited to try anything new that we throw at them! With each wiki that I read, I thought of some way I could use it in my classroom.
One of my favorites was the Schools in the Past wiki. I thought a great way to incorporate this in my classroom would be our community projects. In second grade we use Social Studies Alive to learn about our community. I was thinking that we could post different locations in Mesquite and have community members comment on them and what they remember about Mesquite the way it used to be. There is a lot of history here in our city and sometimes I think that we forget to look back at the very people who got us where we are today.
I also liked the kindergarten counting book. I thought this was a great way to count up to the 100th day of school. I thought we could use second graders in our school and then add additional grade levels if needed to count to 100 students.
Code blue was also a very interesting wiki. I enjoyed reading about what kind of doctor they were. I also went on to read about their patients. They were obviously given a disease to study and they have to research that disease and determine what causes it, treatment, cure, side affects, etc. I think these students learned a tremendous amount in this activity. It is also very evident that they had to learn to work together.
I also read several of the group writing wikis. I think this is a great way to get older students to collaborate with others on their writing ideas. I thought it was cool that they had added clocks for the different time zones that each school was in. I also thought this would be a fun way to do our Flat Stanley project this next year if I could find a school somewhere that would want to link on-line with us.
I get really excited about technology when I am reading all of the really neat things that students are doing all over our world! It is amazing!