Evaluation+of+an+Educational+Wiki

Evaluation of an Educational Wiki Online Autumn

1. Who designed the Wiki? Susan Silverman is the Project Coordinator of the wiki page. She has invited other classroom teachers to join her collaboration efforts to help build integrated learning experiences for students. She has created 42 online projects and continues to inspire teachers to incorporate technology in their classrooms.

2. Who is the Wiki for? The material within the wiki is recommended for second graders (ages 6-7). It highlights students’ positive learning experiences using technology while providing teachers with helpful lessons and assessments. The wiki was designed to help encourage teachers to use technology to support the learning experiences with their students. It has provided opportunities for teachers to showcase their efforts in the classroom and offers ideas for best practices for other educators.

3. What is the purpose of the wiki? The purpose of this wiki is to provide a venue to share resources and unique learning experiences. Its focus is to help in the development of literacy (like poetry and reading), technological and research skills while using the Internet as a medium to collaboratively design and share assessments tools with other schools. It provides a useful resource for other elementary teachers to utilize in their classrooms.

4. What subject(s) is the wiki for? The subjects the wiki is intended for include Math, Science, Technology, and Language Arts. It also incorporates geographical components because it includes all parts of North America as well as Canada. For example, the Cinderella Around the World project supports global and National Technology standards. Within this project, students will share multicultural versions of Cinderella and then participate in activities that incorporate multiple academic subjects (math, science, language arts, and social studies).

5. What are the main contents included? The contents included on this wiki came from the efforts of educators and students from k-4th grades. Within this wiki you will find the project coordinator’s (Susan Silverman) web folio. There are printable worksheets, online activities, student reflections, visitor comments, participant feedback, and links available to view. Students in grades k-4 share their creative writing and artistic talents throughout this wiki. Susan has created a channel for teachers to use Web. 2.0 tools with their students and to showcase their students’ creations via Internet while incorporating the autumn theme.

6. How do the participants contribute to the wiki? Teachers and students share their favorite books, poems, web sites, foods, lesson plans about autumn. Schools from all over North America, Canada, etc display the work of their students’ online collaboration efforts. Each participant is given their own page and is encouraged to use various technology tools within their page (Flickr photographs, podcast, blogs, slide share, etc.).

7. Do you think the wiki serves its purpose well or not? Explain. I think this wiki does serve its purpose well. Each project is carefully designed to integrate state and national standards. In order to publish work on this site the publisher must meet the expected guidelines. Each project explains its intended purpose and answers the Who, What, When, Where, and How to accomplish its goal.

8. Report a thing or two you like and dislike about the wiki? The wiki not only presents great ideas to use in the classroom, but tips and recommendations are also provided to guide teachers throughout the process. Steps are provided for creating activities and how to assess them as well (rubrics). The design layout is colorful and easy to navigate. Two of my favorites are Chocolate Stories and Shark Bytes. The one thing that I disliked about the layout was that many of the schools used the same design, especially to showcase their poetry. I would have liked to see more creativity in their presentation of the material.