Thing #8: Wocka Wocka Wikis

For some strange reason, I keep hearing Fozzie Bear from the Muppets saying, "Wocka, Wocka, Wocka" in my head every time I read the word Wiki. Why? Who knows. I think I'm tired.

This is one of the main reasons I'm here in the Land of 23 Things this summer. I want to embrace the wiki. I have all kinds of ideas for wikis in the library: Teachers will sign up for library time on a wiki; I want kids to use wikis in their research projects; I will use wikis to share lesson ideas for teachers. It's gonna be a wiki-great year. The problem is that I'm not sure how to MAKE a wiki, so I need to figure that out, and I think I'll get the opportunity in Thing #9. I'm wiki-excited! Okay, I'll stop with the wiki-ness. Again, tired.

I loved reading Vicki Davis' blog post about Wiki Wiki Teaching. It made me even more excited about the endless possibilities of wikis in the classroom. Wikis can propel kids to higher-level thinking skills because of the synthesis and evaluation of information that must take place. Wikis make kids excited about learning because they meet them where they are in their tech-savvy world. And the collaboration that wikis create is just plain cool.

I enjoyed looking at the various wikis because they represent the gamut of possibilities.

• The Kindergarten Counting Book demonstrates a very basic wiki, and I love the fact that Kinder kids are introduced to this cool tool at an early age. What a great way to scaffold kids into using wikis.
• The Schools in the Past wiki seemed to be used as an interactive note taker, but I couldn't tell what was done with the information after all of the memories were recorded, but this demonstrates that a wiki is an excellent way to collect information from different people.
  
• Salute to Seuss was my favorite wiki, and my brain is already firing with ideas of how I can get my kids involved in something like this. I think it would be fun to have kids do wikis when they do an author study. The possibilities are endless with wikis, and that's what makes them so amazing!

Wocka, wocka, wocka!