This week we explored personal Wikis which are great tools to interact with and give your students a chance to add to themselves. This did not come, however, without some groans and sighs. I began exploring WikiSpaces which seemed to have a simple enough platform for me to build my Wiki off of. I got right to work making different pages and whatnot but when I came back to delete even just a simple letter, sometimes the whole word or more of the document was deleted! Also using the headings to adjust the size of fonts was not effective at all; I think there are a few bugs to work out because the different headings either showed up HUGE and couldn't be changed or they all appeared the same. I was also mildly frustrated when I could not change my additional page names. I then tried PbWorks which was so complicated I just decided to keep working with my Wiki via Wikispaces.
After my frustration with getting my Wiki just right, I was really happy with the final result. I didn't complete my mock-up Wiki but ideally I would have a new page for each hour of my Spanish classes. I mainly used the Wiki as a place to post homework assignments for the week and additional things that could help in their assignments. One of my goals as a teacher is to get students enthusiastic enough about Spanish to continue their learning outside the classroom. Being able to embed many different things, such as how I embedded a YouTube video in my site, is a great way to incorporate different supplementary materials about lessons. I also included a place on each hour's page for students to write questions/comments or post other Spanish related materials they found and enjoyed. The ease of opening editing to the whole class is what makes the Wiki such a useful tool! I was even contemplating having students required to post something on the Wiki once a month or so for part of their participation grade. Wikis would be a great way to poll students (there's a widget to do so) and display the results for everyone to see. I would also hope that when students post questions on the Wiki that rather than me always answering them, fellow classmates could help out as well.
So after being slightly impatient at first, I've really come to enjoy my Wiki. This is one thing that I can really see using in the future; it could be easier then a class blog or class Pageflake because students can really get involved in shaping it which I truly enjoy!
One would wonder why Wiki would willingly waken wonderment when one was weighing whether Wiki would work wonderfully. Well we wonder whether we will work with Wiki.
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