how a Wiki affects teaching

Caveat: the following are thoughts from just one teacher, after a fairly successful use of this Wiki in the classroom. And I'm sure my students would have great items to add here. But they've escaped....

Benefits for the teacher

Technical problems virtually non-existent. After some training broken into four lessons, students seemed comfortable.

Kept student writing specific, focused, engaged with other students.

Easy to track student activity (example).

Technology seemed to induce extra writing, posting, engagement from students (example).

Multimedia integrated into teaching, collected into one spot (examples: drawings, content-related photos, student-made graphics, student-made movies).

Gives class a strong identity, in & out of the classroom.

Challenges for the teacher

Keeping up - A 'recently posted' function helped. But even with only eight students posting, I wasn't sure I saw all fresh material as it came in. For the weekly posting assignment, I asked them to email me the URL of their three required entries.

Organization - Without some forethought, entries could be scattered to the winds. Author pages (on the right) brought some structure to this site. So did assignment indexes (also on the right).

Posting texts - A lot of gruntwork here, as i had to enter every poem text we studied into the system, correctly formatted.

Fingernail biting - Though no significant technical problems occurred, using new, free, untested software courted disaster. The whole site could crash, an intruder could screw up pages, content could get accidentally erased.... Luckily I had some guardian angels.

Benefits for students

Fostered and rewarded class interaction. "I especially liked the electronic aspect of the class & the interactive dimension it added."

Group identify and focus. "Whole class could focus on poem and comments together." "…sense of ownership."

Allowed more frequent, shorter written expression of ideas.

Allowed quieter students to have a fuller presence in class.

Rewarded skills usually tangential to English class, such as graphics; encouraged creativity.

Challenges for students

Required comfort with computers.

Weekly posting pressure. "The class required constant attention and work."

Weekly posting timing. "Weekly snips were useful, but… difficult to start early because there was little already written to comment on."

Could be self-conscious about posting work for all to see; professor comments (example "seem like a breach of privacy"