Consider the Wiki

This past week has gone by in a whirlwind!  While I have been a Wikipedia user for a while, and had a passing understanding of what a wiki was and even how it worked, I've never integrated them into my practice.  Once again,  I find myself on the brink of applying what I believe to be a revolutionary new technology to my professional life.

I sit on various committees at my school, all broken into sub-committees.  Information is all passed via e-mail along the line, until it eventually gets to the poor principal, whose inbox is perpetually bulging.  I suggested using a wiki to offset the burden of organizing all of that information from one person to the entire group.  Balanced and equitable.  I hope my principal loves it.

In the classroom with my students, I'm beginning to think about using wikis too.  I've begun to rollout the 5th grade environmental project I blogged about earlier, and have students working in teams of 4.  I'm thinking of setting up a wiki for them to hold their collected knowledge on the various topics I've assigned each group.  I think it will be new and exciting for them - and possibly a little frustrating.  But the collaborative paradigm is one I would like to introduce them to early, to build on in future years.
Actually contributing to a wiki with a group myself this past week has been informative too.  It's highlighted some of the possible pitfalls I should be aware of for my young students, including:

• Time Management: if one team member is holding up the rest due to a lack of participation, the whole project suffers.
  
  
• Inventing an organizational structure out of nothing was a bit of a challenge for me.  I imagine that they will also struggle with how to order their thoughts and research.  they will need some pointers on this.
  
  
• This isn't one I felt personally, but I suspect that it will rear up for my students: a sense of possessiveness or individual ownership.  Or maybe it will be a sense of indignation that  some contribute more than others, or contribute more thoughtful and substantive content than others.  I will need to learn how to assess the various products produced, but I'm not quite sure how yet.

I'd like to mention a word about Wikipedia.  I've always been a fan, and have thought that it's detractors were old sticks-in-the-mud.  Reading about Wikipedia and exploring the safeguards that have been recently put in place make me all the more excited.  I'll confess that I'm in a bit of disagreement with the school librarian on this!  I don't believe that Wikipedia can be used blindly or uncritically, but to ban it's use outright seems like throwing the baby out with the bath-water.  I feel compelled to expose my student to this tool in a structured and supervised way; rather than have them encounter and interact with it in their own time, unsupervised, unguided, and likely less critical.