From WikifiedSchools

Wikified Schools

Wikis for Leadership and School Improvement

Stephanie Sandifer

Thursday, February 6, 2009

TCEA Annual Convention, Austin, TX

Tags: Sandifer, WikifiedSchools

If you attended this session, please provide feedback for me by scrolling down to the bottom of this page and filling out the embedded Google Form.

I sincerely enjoyed facilitating the session and I thank you so much for your attendance and participation!

Stephanie Sandifer

Assumptions

This session was developed with the assumption that attendees are already familiar with the basic concept of a wiki and the potential applications of wikis in the classroom.

This session was developed with the assumption that attendees are curious about professional applications of wikis across their campus and/or district.

Introductory Questions

What is our core mission in education and what distracts us from focusing on this core mission?

How can we improve our communication, collaboration, and knowledge management in order to ensure that our core mission remains in first place.

Essential Concepts

Organizational Structure

Wikinomics & Here Comes Everybody

Space and Time

PBWiki's ROI calculator

Concerns

Examples

HISD Literacy Network wiki

Wishart Elementary

St. Francis Xavier Community School

Westwood Technology Plan

Westlake PTO

Classroom 2.0 Wiki Resources Provides an overview of wikis in education as well as links to many helpful resources and examples.

Moving Forward Wiki Provides list of education-related wikis including some school wiki sites.

Getting Started

Choosing a wiki

Step 1: Decide on using a Wiki Hosting Service such as Wikispaces, PBWiki, or WetPaint or using a wiki software package installed on your own servers.

If you opt to use a free Wiki Hosting Service and you are not sure which one to use you can compare them using the Wikimatrix.

If you opt to install a wiki software package like MediaWiki on your own servers, you can use Wikimatrix or review this comparison of many packages before deciding on a package.

Step 2: Informal, grassroots

Step 3: Action Research - document and identify best practices specific to your organization as they occur, determine what works and what doesn't work for your school or district

Step 4: Focus, Structure, and Guidelines

Step 5: Roll out to other users with training, support, and mentoring

Step 6: Nurture, encourage, and celebrate successes and innovative use

Using a wiki

Potential uses:

• School Website
• School Improvement Plan
• Professional Development Plan
• Technology Plan
• Department Collaboration wiki
  • lesson planning
  • curriculum planning
• Faculty Handbooks
• Student/Parent Handbooks
• PTA Website
• Professional Development planning, documentation, archive
• Meeting Agendas & Notes (agenda development, agenda posting, note-taking and archiving)
• Committees
• Classroom Instruction Handbook
• Student Leadership
• Wiki instead of PowerPoint (and handouts) for professional development
• Wiki instead of chart paper for meetings & workshops
• Wiki for shared note-taking at conferences
• Event planning
• Document business processes
• Capture pedagogical knowledge of veteran teachers
• New Teacher Induction wiki (for knowledge sharing and collaborative learning)
• Data Inventories
• Instructional Initiatives Inventories

Wiki Syntax

All hosting services and software packages have their own markup language, and the three major hosting services allow users to edit pages using WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). However, even with WYSIWYG toolbars, it is helpful to know some of the markup syntax in order to tweak your pages or incorporate more advance textual elements. The links below provided handy guides to the most commonly used markup elements in the major wiki sites/software packages.

Wikispaces

PBWiki

WetPaint

MediaWiki

Lessons Learned

• Do provide access to the wiki outside of district or school intranets.

• Do encourage "grass-roots" adoption.

• Do start small, make edits together as a group the first time, promote the use of wiki over email.

• Do insist on real names for username.

• Do provide lots of praise and encouragement for ANY participation, then later, praise and encouragement for meaningful participation.

• Do get permission to publish images of students/colleagues.

• Don't impose an overly strict structure to the wiki.

• Don't block access to free wiki sites such as Wikipedia, PBWiki, or WetPaint.

• Don't allow for anonymous edits or comments. Do set a positive, constructive tone early.

• Don't take user experience for granted. many of your users will not be web 2.0 savvy.

• Finally, always keep the technology adoption model in mind...

The model above shows the average distribution of technology adoption in any given population of people. The color-coding above represents the division of this distribution into three "tiers" of people that we can focus on when we are coaching or introducing new tools & concepts.

Tier 1 - Early Adopters & Innovators

• Need support & room to “play” - let these people grow your wiki in a grassroots manner.

Tier 2 - Early & Late Majority

• Mean well and understand need, but feel overwhelmed, overworked, and no time to learn - need support, safe environment. Mentoring from Tier 1 people will greatly increase the use of wiki by these Tier 2 folks.

Tier 3 - Laggards

• Rarely understand need, feel no need to learn, may never adopt. Be persistent with these folks, but also understand that they may remain reluctant.

Wiki Etiquette

• Don't be rude or offensive when posting comments or making edits.
• Don't write: "Click here for more information about Collaborative Learning." Instead, write "More info about Collaborative Learning". Avoid doing this for external links as well.
• Do correct typos or content errors.
• Do contribute original content or referenced materials. Follow normal citation and reference rules for academic writing to avoid plagiarizing or violating copyrights.
• Do use actual dates. For example, write "In August 2009 we implemented a new intervention program..." rather than writing "Last August we implemented a new intervention program..."
• Do add your signature to comments if applicable and do avoid using first-person references when creating wiki content.
• Do remain objective when adding or creating content. Pros and cons should be included when appropriate.
• Do cite your sources, include links to original material if available online, and always give credit where it is due.
• Do be bold. Go ahead and create content or edit someone else's work. Remember that this is all about collaboration.
• Don't be offended if someone edits your work. Remember that this is all about collaboration.
• Do include "notes" when you make changes to explain what changes were made and why your made them.
• Do recognize useful content and give praise to constructive work that adds value to the wiki.
• Do help build structure. Allow for collaborative synthesis and structuring of the content by everyone.
• Do follow basic rules of grammar and avoid writing in ALL CAPS which is considered "shouting" in online communications.
• Do use your own name and not an alias. This helps to build trust among the team and holds everyone accountable for their contributions.

Reflective Question

If you ARE NOT already using wikis in your work:

What aspects of your work could be done using a wiki starting today, and how might that impact your time and productivity?

If you ARE already using a wiki in your work:

In what ways are you using a wiki or wikis and how might you expand or enhance this work based on what you have learned in this session?

Resources

Wiki Hosting & Software

Free Wikispaces for Educators

Free wikis on PBWiki

Ad-Free Wikis for Educators from WetPaint

Google Sites

Free Open Source Software Package for Wikis from MediaWiki

Books

"Wikified Schools" (Stephanie Sandifer)

“Wikipatterns” (Stewart Mader)

“Using Wiki in Education” (Stewart Mader)

"Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything” (Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams)

"Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” (Clay Shirky)

Books on Related Topics

“Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms” (Will Richardson)

Using Technology With Classroom Instruction That Works

Classroom Blogging: 2nd Edition (David Warlick)

Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools (Gwen Solomon, Lynne Schrum)

National Educational Technology Standards (NETS)

Reflections & Feedback