Saturday, August 11, 2007

Week 7 Thing 16 and 17 - Wikis and School Libraries

"A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content." I'm so glad to finally have an actual definition for the term. Before beginning the School Library Learning 2.0 quest, I was constantly confusing wikis with blogs. I still think that they are pretty similar, but a wiki seems to be more open to the input of others.
I like the collaborative nature of a wiki. I can see having a class work to create a wiki related to a specific topic that they are studying. Wikis could be used in a library as a "fun" tool. Students could add book reviews to a library wiki as a way of sharing their favorite books with their classmates. I think that students become more engaged in their learning when it results in an actual product that they can take pride in. Using a wiki could positively impact student motivation.
I looked at some of the wikis from the list. I plan to further investigate the blogs on the list of school library blogs at Blogging libraries wiki. It's interesting to look at these blogs and see how the librarians are incorporating blogging into their library program.
I also looked at the Curriculum Connections for the School Library Learning wiki. What a rich resource! So many creative ideas! In looking at some other blogs connected to this class, I saw one where the librarian created a wiki for the teachers to use to schedule their time in the library. I think this is a very creative idea. I am curious about how the teachers actual scheudle the class time and if there would be a problem with one teacher deletint another.

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