Google Docs Vs. Wikis

Google Docs are something with which I have a little bit of experience, but clearly not enough.  I believe that they should be easy, but Google docs have confused me in the past.  I know how to get to them, but I can never seem to figure out the use.  However, wikis made sense to me immediately.

Now, with that being said, I can see the great benefit of the school improvement plan being placed in Google docs and shared with the entire school.  This plan is share with us once a year, maybe twice, and we are supposed to be implementing it?  I think providing access to the staff would be a good manner to enact the plan.  I could see how curriculum documents could be shared the same way.  In fact, I noticed this past year that once I accessed my curriculum documents, they automatically ended up in my Google docs.  This made finding them easier than searching for the secondary mathematics site.

While I find Google docs a beneficial "storage" place for important documents that makes retrieval easy from anywhere, I do not quite see myself using this with my students in classroom applications.  I like wikis for that.  I am more comfortable and confident with my ability to implement this technology.  However, since the entire staff has Google docs and our data coach has used these in the past to share information, I could see Google docs being an important tool for sharing documents with my colleagues.

Wiki Creation

After reading the wonderful uses of wikis, I was looking so forward to beginning the process.  Creating the wiki was simple; however, developing rules and expectations was a different story.  As a new user of wikis, I struggled with foreseeing all of the problems that could arise.  While I read others' rules, I considered which I feel are helpful and which I feel too restrictive or not restricting enough.  I thought about the students that I taught this past year and the trials that I faced when we accessed technology.  I also considered the expectations that I have in my physical classroom.  I do not believe in listing every restriction as a classroom rule.  With these things in mind, I began developing my rules page.  Though it is short, I like the idea that changes can be made as necessary.  The editing function will be a lifesaver to new users like me.  I have already renamed the page as I felt expectations was a better description than rules.  I hope that as I continue learning, I will be able to develop a wiki that is both educational and fun for the students.

Wikis

The more I learn about the technology that exists, the more excited I am becoming about the next school year starting.  I thought that being able to use blogging to connect the class to the community was a good use of technology.  It would allow me to provide information to both the students and the parents and allow them to respond to both me and each other.  However, with a new understanding of what wikis are, I am even more excited about being able to use wikis to improve instruction!

I believe that wikis will be a great tool for allowing the students to gather different information as the year progresses that will then be available as both a review for the high stakes tests this year and years to come.  For instance, I am considering implementing wikis as chapter reviews.  I believe that if I create a wiki for the chapter and assign specific sections to each student, as a group they will be able to create a review before each unit assessment.  These reviews will then be available for future years to begin with and build upon.  Moreover, as I consider the high stakes tests that my students will have to take, I recognize that these reviews will be available as the tests approach.  

Finally, similarly to the unit reviews, I believe that the wikis would be a wonderful tool for the project that I use to wrap up the year.  The students create documents for each of the state standards.  These documents include notes, pre-tests, exit tickets, and PowerPoints.  By using a wiki, I would have a forum to collect this information and make it available for the students to access on their own without me hanging the notes or displaying the PowerPoint.  It would allow students to collaborate on the information and access he information for reviews.

I am very excited about the prospects, but hesitant at the same time.  I can see all of the great uses, but what happens when students interfere with other students work.  By allowing the collaboration, I am also setting up a site that would allow students to incorrectly edit another student's work.  How do I prevent these unauthorized edits?  How do I maintain the integrity of the work?