Dispelling 8 Common Myths for Educators Considering Launching a School Wiki

As the recipient of the National Silver Award for Best How-To Article for my article, 8 Ways To Use A School Wiki to Increase Communication, Collaboration, and Enrich Instruction, and as a wiki-aficionado who has helped countless educators set up their own wikis, I consider myself a Wiki Wizard. I was happy to learn recently that I was in good company as curriculum mapping guru Heidi Hayes Jacobs believes wikis are an essential educational tool of the 21st century. See her wiki here.

However, they still are a relatively new tool and the whole idea of collaborative writing, thinking, and learning is still new to a lot of educators uncertain about this brave new world of networked knowledge creation. When I suggest to schools that they can become more efficient, effective, and can grow their thinking by leaps and bounds, there’s sometimes doubt and trepidation about these uncharted waters. When I share they’ll never have to print another memo, school handbook, or lesson plan again and in general they’ll be able to save thousands by ditching the paper budget, I often have folks interested. When teachers learn that a wiki can eliminate the often intrusive morning and afternoon announcements that rob students of precious learning time, there’s also a lot of interest. When school leaders realize their staff will be able to engage in anytime/anywhere communication and collaboration, they know this is a good thing for their school and staff. When schools learn that they’ll save countless hours in collaborating on curriculum mapping and they’ll never lose (or have to carry a binder) again, well they’re usually sold. You can read how to do all those things in my article 8 Ways To Use A School Wiki to Increase Communication, Collaboration, and Enrich Instruction.

The benefits of using a wiki are endless and transformative. The downside is...well in my five years of using dozens if not hundreds of wikis, I have yet to see one, but, there are those who are fearful of the unknown. This post is written to help educators get past the fear and onto doing the work of meaningful collaboration that will ultimately benefit students, teachers, and leaders.

Dispelling the Myths of Wiki Dangers

Below is a variation on the sort of conversations I might have with a school who has concerns about launching a school wiki.

I followed your advice and created a free school wiki. I put up all our school manuals, set up a link for daily announcements, and created a page for every subject and every teacher. I was so looking forward to the creation of trusting and collaborative relationships between colleagues that do not normally have the opportunity to cross paths. A wiki would enable our staff to connect anytime/anywhere regardless of the constraints of schedules. I was so excited to ditch the paper and let the collaboration begin! No sooner did I get things started then my supervisor insist I shut it down because [insert concern below].

Here are ways to address those concerns.

Concern: Teachers could edit other teachers pages and we’re not comfortable with that.
Response: As with any traditional or new tool protocols and acceptable use should be put in place. If a teacher doesn’t want to collaborate or receive input from others s/he can indicate that in professional wording on the top of their page and set up a discussion tab for comments. If this were to happen however, a teacher could easily see who it was who did this. Address him/her directly about his/her preferences and revert to the previous version.

Concern: Everything could be accidentally or intentionally erased and gone forever.
Response: Nope. Not possible. You can always revert to an earlier version and you can see who made the unwanted changes and discuss the issue.

Concern: Everyone will know what everyone else is doing.
Response: Yep. They will. You want your wiki to be a place of sharing, collaboration, and celebration. All too often teachers close their doors and that’s it. Wikis provide an opportunity to take a virtual peak anytime, anywhere and learn from and discuss the nuggets you find behind those doors.

Concern: People could write things that are inappropriate.
Response: Yes they can and you’ll know who they are because the wiki lets you know in the page history. If you have a staff member inclined to engage in inappropriate behavior and they do so on the wiki, everyone will see that. Hopefully there can be a conversation so this is not an issue in the future. If this is a person truly intent no sabotaging the work of others, well 1) that’s a bigger issue, but 2) you can remove editing rights.

Concern: Resistant teachers who view technology as a burden will wish to continue excluding it from the curriculum.
Response: It’s important not to allow the luddites hold back the progress of those interested in enriching teaching and learning with modern tools. If there is a teacher or teachers who are not interested in sharing and collaborating, focus on those who are. If you work for an innovative leader like Jason Levy who uses wikis with his staff, there are expectations that the wiki is the place staff will go to gain and share information. All staff are responsible for the information.

Concern: A wiki can mirror inter-school politics if we let them.
Response: Just as in the physical school environment, it is important to set up protocols and respectable and acceptable use. Online interaction is an extension of what happens offline. Politics must be addressed in the same way whether virtual or physical.

Concern: There are people who shouldn’t see what we are publishing. Unintended viewers could be problematic.
Response: Wikis should have intended audiences. I recommend that schools set up an internal wiki that is private to educators and another public wiki that can be shared with students and parents.

To really learn how to use wikis best, you’ll need to jump in and start collaborating. Once you do, or if you have, please share any other concerns you or your colleagues may have about using this powerful collaboration tool. If there are, please share in the comments and I’ll do my best to address them. Until then remember to Wiki while you work and the rewards will come.

8 Ways To Use A School Wiki to Increase Communication, Collaboration, and Enrich Instruction

Wikis are a great tool to help a school enrich instruction, and increase communication and collaboration among staff. They are also free (for educators using wikispaces) and provide unlimited storage for digital materials including video, screencasts, presentations, pdfs, etc.

When I explain these benefits to educators and their administrators they often nod in agreement, but still want to know the nuts and bolts of what this looks like in practice. The best way to explain this is to use examples of actual school wikis in use here in New York City. I've selected examples of how schools are using wikis in the following ways:

1. Decrease Disruption of Instructional Time with Digital Daily Announcements
2. More Efficient and Effective Team Meetings and Planning
3. Collaborate On Important Documents Like School Comprehensive Education Plans
4. Enhance School Professional Development Using a Wiki
5. Share and Collaborate On Curriculum Maps
6. Save Trees /Save Time and Unclutterize Your Room or Office by Posting School Resources
7. Know Where Everyone Is When Schedules/Programs Are Posted
8. A Portal for All Your Lessons
   Information on How to Get Started

Decrease Disruption of Instructional Time with Digital Daily Announcements
Each day daily notes are posted on the school wiki. Gone are the days when instructional time is stolen from students with announcements that often don’t apply to them. Instead, each day staff knows where they need to look to find out the important information. The template Jason Levy, Principal of CIS 339 uses for his daily notes includes:
-Announcements and Reminders by Department
-Staff Attendance
-Out at PD / Visitors
-Staff Recognizing Staff
-Celebrating RED (Rigor. Engagement. Differentiation) in Practice
-Other Stuff:
Notes also may contain surveys and/or forms for teachers to complete, readings, or other important news and notes of the day. Many of these items (i.e. recognizing staff, celebrating RED) are dynamically populated using Google docs. This provides an ongoing reinforcement of staff priorities and vision.

After the staff member has read the daily notes they digitally sign a Google document with their initials indicating they have read the daily notes and they can also indicate if there are any questions, issues, feedback or concerns. You can see what this looks like here and here.

More Efficient and Effective Team Meetings and Planning
All team meetings and planning can be coordinated right on your wiki. This gives staff and administration a one stop shopping spot to see exactly what is happening and how work is progressing at various team meetings.

At CIS 339 the team meeting pages include team norms and activities in which teams should be engaged followed by a listing of each team and a link to all their meeting notes, agendas, documents, and materials. Each team meeting page also has a discussion board where conversations can continue. You can see an example of what this page looks like here.

Collaborate On Important Documents Like School Comprehensive Education Plans
CIS 339 uses their school wiki to collaborate on the creation, revising, and updating of their school’s comprehensive education plan. The wiki is organized with general planning and process documents, then each department has a section for their piece. This enables everyone to see where anyone is at any time and the discussion tab allows for ongoing conversation while the documents are being created. You can see an example of what this page looks like here.

Enhance School Professional Development Using a Wiki
Anytime your school is having professional development all the materials can be loaded to the wiki. No more copies to run off, folders to buy, teachers sharing if there aren’t enough copies, or worrying about writing on your only copy. Additionally, a discussion forum is associated with each wiki page. This is a great way to elicit feedback during professional development and to keep the conversation going afterwards.

Share and Collaboratee On Curriculum Maps
Wikis are a great tool for schools involved in curriculum mapping. Washington Irving High School (click thumbnail on right) posts their English department curriculum maps on their wiki. At the Marta Valle Secondary School, curriculum maps for each content area are posted on their school wiki. Departments begin with the curriculum mapping template that teams can collaborate on to complete. Department members can easily put links to all materials and important documents required for each piece of the map. This also allows for planning across grades and department since all information is transparently posted. The discussion tab provides a powerful communication mechanism for those implementing the curriculum to collaborate. You can see a sample of what that looks like here.

Save Trees /Save Time and Unclutterize Your Room or Office by Posting School Resources
Wikis are a clutter terminator. If you're like most educators, your classroom or office desk or bookshelves are filled with documents, memos, guides, etc. that while important, rarely need to be accessed. You know, the school handbook, conference handouts, flyers, guides, articles, etc. etc. All those documents, boxes and boxes worth, can be posted in an easily accessible format, right on the wiki. In addition to saving space, schools will save time by not having to place all these documents in everyone’s mailbox every day.

At MVSS you’ll find documents such as the opening day packet, school handbook, school safety plan, principal’s letters and presentations, frequently used forms, instructional resources, discipline code, quality review documents, the vision statement, the mission statement, school brochure and more. You can see an example of what this page looks like here. At CIS 339 you’ll find many of these documents as well as a compilation of relevant articles and links which you can see here.

Know Where Everyone Is When Schedules/Programs Are Posted
All teacher schedules, bell schedules, meetings, etc. can be posted right on the wiki so any staff member can locate their colleagues at anytime. This combined with the posting of staff absences and class coverages in the daily notes ensures that staff will always know where and when their colleagues can be found.

A Portal for All Your Lessons
At many schools there may be more than one teacher teaching the same subject/unit of study. However, there never seems to be enough time to collaborate. A wiki solves that issue. All lessons can be posted right on the wiki and using the discussion tab, teachers can connect and collaborate. I used a wiki to do this for teachers across New York City who were running iSquad 21st Century Student Support teams. The faculty advisors and I brainstormed lesson ideas and posted all the lesson topics on the wiki, then faculty advisors signed up for the lesson they were writing by placing their name next to it and posting their lesson. Each advisor wrote one or two lessons and we instantly had a bank of lessons accessible to all. You can see what that looks like here. I also coordinated curriculum integration teams responsible for creating technology-infused lessons in literacy, science, social studies, math, and fitness. Teams met in person from time to time, but most of their work was done remotely where they collaborated to write a bank of lessons that can be used and accessed by teachers anywhere which you can see here.

How to Get Started
You can have your own free school wiki in 30 seconds or less by visiting http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers. Once there you select your wikis name and click create, then Voilà, you have a wiki. If you want to know more about using wikis in education, TeachersFirst has created a handy Wiki Walk-Through which steps you through using wikis in education in a clear and easy to follow way. You can also, take a look at the Educational Wikis space. It has examples, a guide, and links to other resources.

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This post was picked up in the August 2009 edition of Tech and Learning Magazine .