Wikis

This week's topic was wikis. First, we had to build our own wiki. Building a wiki was surprisingly easy and fun. I wasn't sure what to write so I just started writing about the new apartment we're looking for since that's been on my mind. After that, I asked my friends to edit the wiki. They didn't really want to create new accounts. Luckily, PBWorks has an option for teachers whose students don't have email addresses. I was able to assign them accounts through my "education account" without them having to sign up. To be honest, I wasn't that excited about the result, probably because we were all sitting together while they were working on it. I can see the potential for student projects however - especially for writing collaborative essays. We also have students write scripts for presentations in our speaking classes. A wiki would be incredibly useful for that as well.
See my wiki here: http://missemilyreba.pbworks.com/w/page/39055415/Apartment

I also had to edit my school's wikipedia entry. I edited the UCR academies site rather than building an entirely new site for my school. This task was much more difficult for me.  I felt like the article was well written and I didn't want to add something for the sake of adding something. First, I fixed the broken links at the bottom of the page, most of which were outdated. Then, I edited the wiki to mention that students are encouraged to study at UCR rather than California because that's more truthful. I also added a detail about them getting a discount on tuition because it's something we really try to play up at our school. Here's a picture of the changes I made in the website: