Obviously, there is a big push to integrate technology into the classroom where possible. When it comes to writing, the vast majority of people are using some sort of word processing program to write letters, reports, emails, etc. This makes learning to write, edit, and revise using the tools on a given word processing system important.
Using a Wiki in the classroom gives children a chance to spend some of their writing time developing stories using a word processing function. What's more, their work can be accessed at home through the Internet. This also means that their parents can visit the site to read their
stories, help them edit, or provide them a structured time at home to work on their writing as a home assignment.
Using a Wiki is easy to do. There are several free sites that allow a teacher to host her class. I set up my class with their own page on www.pbwiki.com
Once you provide an email and password you are given access to your own url, which can then be typed in from any Internet ready computer to access the stories. Once logged onto the site I wrote up a welcome page to visitors. I proceeded to set up a folder and created a page for each of my students inside that folder. Now, whenever my students want to write, edit, or revise their stories they can open up their own page and do so. There are many different ways to maintain student pages. If preferred, the teacher has the option of providing each student a unique password for their work. the benefit of that is nobody else will be able to visit his page and edit his work. As I have it set up now, the children are able to do that, however, I stressed my rule that each child is only allowed to edit his own page, though he can visit other student pages to read various stories.
Teachers can use the Wiki for assigned writing tasks, Writers Workshop tasks, research reports...the ideas are limitless. Students have the options of adding photos found on the Internet or uploaded. Students can even draw their own pictures, scan them, and upload
them to put with their stories.
Parents simply have to type in the url, administrator email, and password, and can then have access to student stories whenever, or from wherever they want. This makes it nice to bridge the teacher-parent gap.
Visit the site today and set up your own account!