Here is the link to the video that we watched in class today:
The video that we watched today was about how we can use wiki in a school context, but not as students, but as teachers. This tool can be very useful to share some lesson plans, ideas and different ways to teach something. The Vail School District created a wiki called Beyond Textbooks which is used to post ideas and lesson plans. A lot of schools joined this wiki and, with the schools’ union, new information coming from outside a district can be provided into a particular one. Teachers can be aware faster of what is going on regarding education in many other schools. It is also a good last minute resources for teachers.
I think that the use of wikis is relevant when you are a teacher because you can share information such as lesson plans, ideas and important data. Furthermore, in Sze’s article, it says that, by using wikis, students can do brainstorming, blogs, collaborative writing, planning events, book reports, etc. All those things can also be done by teachers. They can put their lesson plans on it and they can be modified by other teachers to add suggestions to it (collaborative aspect). Furthermore, if a teacher is stuck and don’t know what to do with his/her classes, he/she can use lesson plans available on the wiki or do a brainstorm and ask help from other teachers. This tool can also be used as a planning tool (the teachers’ team of a specific year can easily be aware of where they have to be at a particular time of the year). If we take a look at Kovacic et al. text, it says that wikis “enabled online collaboration and peer-to-peer learning, facilitated [students’] critical thinking and inspired creativity”. Again, all that can be applied to teachers. I think that the use of wikis is a good thing for teachers because it brings them to always improve their teaching and be aware of what is going on in the teachers’ world.
I agree that wikis are great new sources for teachers to find ideas and share lesson plans. However you brought up a very good point; teachers having a simple and accessible tool might souly rely on other teachers to plan their lessons. This could be positive, for the (procrastinator) teacher but knowing that every lesson must have a specific purpose and not chosen at random, to maximize the students' learning process, it could also be negative. What do you think?
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