Week #7 Wikis

Now this is an area in which I have had interest in for a while. Last year we set up a professional wiki for our elementary librarians. I learned a much better way to organize this by looking at the examples provided. We use it to centralize forms, share lessons and talk about ongoing issues. It took some pushing to get some to use it and this year I think I would have to push again. I noticed that the Princeton wiki that was used by a summer book club has moved to have the reviews right where partrons are accessing the books. I think that is the way we are moving. The wiki will still have some uses since it is available from home. We also have an intranet we could use but it is only available to us in school.

I have also used wikis for my resume which also contains my favorite sites. I am able to access it from most places to get to those sites. I subscribe to the TeacherLibrarian ning that Joyce Valenza set up. I go to it occasionally but have bookmarked her website which has a lot of good information. I have a wiki set up for my school on which to put student audio booktalks but will probably not use it since I now have access to a webpage that will be linked in to the district. I will be learning about sharepoint this week and how I will update the page and keep the content current. I have been working with students on podcasts and ensuring that they know only to use their first names for safety purposes. In 4th they podcast poetry and add sound effects and music. In 5th they write up a script for a booktalk and then podcast it. They also add bumper music and intros and closes which makes it fun. I had planned to put them on the wiki to make them accessible to all students but will now probably put them on the library website.