Wikis are fun

Last year we had a "trailing spouse" who was keen to experiment with anything and everything regarding technology, pretty neat guy, but sometimes difficult to keep up with. He had retired from IBM and spent his days probably similarly to how he worked for the 30 years he was with big blue. Anyway, he had tried to interest me in Wikis before, but I was hesitant, something new, something comlicated blah blah blah.

Now, I'm realizing his perception in understanding that Wikis are not just Wikipedia.

I searched for "Wiki middle school technology"
and found Middle School Information Technology which has some nice activities which I'm sure I would have loved if I had found them 8 years ago. As it is, I still like the design element in their course work, but our school has taken a bit different approach to technology in the middle school, so I can't directly use the ideas.

However, I was intrigued and checked out what the creator of the wiki had done, and found that she has been quite a prolific wikier (what do you call someone who uses wikis?)

Anyway, one that caught my eye was Tech in The Middle which as I read the purpose of the wiki, I found myself again wishing that this was around 15 years ago when I got my first tech job. MSCOFINO states that as she(?) has moved from one international school to the next she(?) has found little or no curriculum with which to do her job, and then needs to create a program from scratch. This is my fourth international school and at one of them, there was some work left from a previous tenent.

I believe that the wiki is one example of a shared network that will make shared learning and shared experience a reality. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. It's almost mind boggling the scope that wiki and web 2.0 activities could lead to. Imagine only half the world (3 billion people) working on one problem. O.K. maybe that's a bit extreme, I've been on comittees that were too big to be useful, but the idea is sound.

Another neat site I found while searching around is: Teacher Tube
Has "educational" videos.

James Shin-Gay