Using wikis

Posted by reuw on October 09, 2009 at 06:18 am

At Neveh Channah Girls High School at the Etzion Bloc, Israel, we have been using wikis for class projects and even as a virtual classroom. We use the free education wikispaces wikis which suport Hebrew as well as English and other languages.

Here is our wiki book for Parshat Shavua done by our tenth grade girls - http://nc-parsha.wikispaces.com/

Here is the wiki prepared by our students to prepare for the matriculation exam (bagrut) in Tanach - http://wiki-ut.wikispaces.com/

Here is the wiki we used to do a collaborative learning project with LCC school in Montreal. - http://jerusalem.wikispaces.com/

We have many other online wiki projects, but this enough for starts.
Chag Sameach,
Reuven Werber

Comments

Re: Using wikis

Posted by Terry on October 25, 2009 at 08:03 pm

David Behrman and I just got back from Chicago where Rabbi Judy Spicehandler, Director of Education at North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, and Judy Weiss, Assistant Director of Education, and their teachers have implemented a very successful wiki with the 7th graders. It integrates web resources and collaborative project learning. Learn more at http://nscigrade7.wikispaces.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Re: Using wikis

Posted by Andy on October 09, 2009 at 10:42 am

adurlester wrote: :( This is more a note for whoever administers the forum. Currently, links do not open in a new window. Please adjust the settings so that links in messages open in a new window.

I have made the requested change which will now take effect for all future links posted in our forum. Thanks for the suggestion!! See below for an example....

http://www.behrmanhouse.com

Re: Using wikis

Posted by adurlester on October 09, 2009 at 08:37 am

Reuven:

I'm curious as to why you're using a wiki, as there doesn't appear to be much collaboration. At least, on the "Collaboration" project with the school in Canada, history shows most of the posting and edits were done by you. So the question is, why a wiki? I've been puzzling over this question myself. I have used blogs, wikis, Google Groups and Google sites and each have their own strengths and weaknesses. The real strength of a Wiki is the ability of group editing, and thus it seems really appropriate for group collaboration projects. It's also easier to post documents to Wikis than blogs. Wikis and blogs are weak when it comes to document files-you generally have to upload files to some online host and then link to them, whereas on a wiki you can put the file right on the page. (I'm not talking videos or music, those are easy to embed almost anywhere, but it's not so easy to embed a pdf or wrd.doc or excel spreadsheet in a blog post (Blogger and Wordpress are both weak in this arena.)

What would be nice to see is some sort of hybrid between a Google/Yahoo Group, blog, website, and wiki. One of the strengths of using a Google or Yahoo Groups site is that is has areas for files, messages, etc. If one could add a wiki and a blog to that, imagine the possibilities.

Adrian A. Durlester Amherst, MA

Re: Using wikis

Posted by adurlester on October 09, 2009 at 08:07 am

:( This is more a note for whoever administers the forum. Currently, links do not open in a new window. Please adjust the settings so that links in messages open in a new window.