Classroom+Wiki

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==My classroom wiki has been developed as a communication tool for our school's 6th grade news team, of which I'm the advisor. The 20 students, all volunteers, meet weekly during their lunch time to learn journalism principles and to generate a monthly 4-page newspaper, //The Center of Attention//. This wiki has been a wonderful avenue for students to submit their articles. They are encouraged to read and edit each others' articles, which hasn't been occurring much yet but is being encouraged on a weekly basis.==

==Because of the constantly changing nature of this wiki, an observer may see many postings on one viewing, but very few at another time. This is because after an issue is printed the postings are cleared off to prepare for the next issue. At the same time, I am linking to web articles that provide valuable resources for the students. These links will continue to be expanded.==

=[|Link to BES News Team wiki]=

2: A: Use technology effectively and appropriately to interact electronically
B: Use technology to communicate information in a variety of formats

====5: Design, implement and assess learning experiences that incorporate use of technology in the curriculum-related instructional activity to support understanding, inquiry, problem solving, communication or collaboration====

Reflection
The use of the wiki has been a huge improvement in the submission of articles for our newspapers. Earlier in our newspaper's history students will submit their hand-written articles, then several other students would type them into the computer. This required 2 additional days after school each month - a big, inefficient time commitment. More recently some students would submit articles on diskettes or flash drives, opening up concerns about virus transmission, Word Perfect vs. MS Word, and availability of the disks or flash drives to the students. This system was very unwieldy; frequently students would submit a print-out of their article, causing it to be typed again at school. The wiki has solved all of these problems. Students can type their articles into any online computer and the articles are immediately available to be edited and pasted into the newspaper. The history component of the wiki allows students to follow edits others have made to their articles and gives teachable lessons for our meetings.

Since the News Team struggles to meet once per week, regular communication with the students is difficult. It is a challenge to improve the students' journalistic skills while we attend to the demanding business of creating our monthly newspaper. Links to instructional web sites give motivated students access to selected resources for this. As mentioned above, this use of the wiki will be developed during the school year and especially during the summer.