Thing 21

Wikis are a fantastic way to assign collaborative work. I didn't find just one wiki that inspired me, however, it was more of a compilation. I spent a lot of time searching through the educational wikis to gather ideas on how educators were using them.

Here are some of the hurdles that I found and solutions to overcome:

• students need email addresses - not true... Wikispaces allows you to create user names and passwords if you have an education account
• the ads on the side of the wiki - again, you can email Wikispaces and request they remove the ads - or you can pay to upgrade also
• in collaborative projects, only certain students actually do the work - Wikispaces keeps revision history so you can see exactly who does what and when
• parents may not want their student to publish their work online - gain permission slips or come up with an alternate assignment for those students that can't participate

In closing, I think that working with Wikis is well worth the effort whether you are using it as a communication tool or a collaboration tool with students. It's a simple process to create and update and provides the educator with an online presence.