Wiki Evaluation

I find the use of wikis very beneficial in the classroom. There are a number of ways that teachers and students can use them. I find the best way for students to use them is through collaboration work with other students. I spent a great deal of time looking for literacy-focused wikis. Two that I found were Fonde Fourth Grade and Stewart 4th Grade Wiki.

The first wiki that I came across was Fonde Fourth Grade. This wiki seemed to be well organized from the initial click of the home page. I went to the reading page that provided a good amount of resources for main idea and drawing conclusions. These would be not only beneficial for the students, but possibly the parents and other teachers as well. This wiki page also provided a few links to Reading Street resources. These three links provide a number of resources geared towards this specific reading series which would not only help the students, but also act as a support tool for other teachers. There are endless opportunities with the Reading Street links. This wiki definitely catered to these specific students and also to the certain elements that were covered in this school and the specific reading series. Once negative aspect that I noticed was when you tried to view the individual teacher pages there was nothing other than a blurb directing you back to the reading page. There were a few aspects that I found valuable, but overall this wiki was lacking.

Another literacy wiki that I evaluated was Stewart Elementary Wiki. This wiki was pleasing to the eye from the get go. Once you viewed the reading tab the links were a little sporadic  throughout the page. However, it wasn’t so cluttered that I couldn’t navigate my way through the links. On the reading page there was also a number of links and tabs that correlated with the Treasures Reading Series that my students are currently using. So this automatically catered to my specific needs as a fourth grade teacher. There was also a page for writing on this wiki. This writing page provided a number of links, prompts, generators, and ideas for students to use in writing or during writing time. three more tabs became available after choosing the writing tab. The grammar, poetry, and vocabulary pages also had a number of links available for student use. Overall this school’s wiki seems extremely beneficial in a number of ways and provides students with many different options to further their learning.