The Wonderful World of Wikis!

I think that Wikis are a great tool to use in the classroom. Wikis can be edited by multiple people so they would make it easy for students to collaborate on projects and assignments. For elementary education, I believe that Wikis will be most beneficial in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade because these students will have more experience using the internet.

One way that students can use Wikis in the classroom is literature circles. Students can be divided into groups of about 4 or 5 and each group chooses a book that they want to read. Everyone in the group would have a certain role/task to contribute. For example, one student could summarize the assigned reading, another student could connect the reading to other concepts that they have been learning, and another student could define important vocabulary words. Each student would add their portion of the assignment to the Wiki. Also, having a class Wiki would allow students to view the pages of other literature circles to learn about the books that they are reading. I think that this is a great way to get students excited about reading and to introduce them to several kinds of books.