This week I have been adding too and cleaning up my Wiki. Of all the things that we have covered so far I feel that a classroom Wiki is probably the most useful tool we have discussed and learned about. They are such a great way to manage content and give information to my students. I had not used them or really even heard of them prior to taking the masters program. About the only thing I knew was that "wiki" meant fast or quick in Hawaiian. The biggest use for a Wiki I see is for managing assignments with my students. I am a special education teacher and many of my students miss a great deal of school for a variety of reasons. This would allow those students who are gone to access missing assignments and even some content while they are absent from my class. This would also be an additional way to communicate with parent as well.
The last thing i just want to briefly discuss is the use of PodCasts, as an additional resource for my students. I was very impressed with the ease of which I was able to upload my recording on "Gabcast". This would be an excellent way to get information to my students who are out of my classroom. I really liked the idea for pronunciation of words too. Some of the students I work with struggle with phonics and the podcast would be an excellent way for them to hear vocabulary pronounced correctly.
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It sounds like the wiki is very suitable for your classroom. It almost seems that the wiki could take the place of some school managment software that districts use currently. That probably saves you time, paper and energy to store all of the classroom homework documents on the wiki. As you wrote, I'm sure parents appreciate it, too.
Using podcasts to keep students up to date on what is happening in class is a great idea, and you're right that many of these podcast and screencast tools / websites are very easy to use. I found screencast-o-matic very easy to use, as well. It seems to me that podcasts would have many applications to language instruction in schools, as you pointed out.
Good point, what school management software are we using? We need to rethink that.
I am glad it is working out Eric. I just love the wiki and so do my students. My next wiki will start out with a video telling them what to do.. they seldom read their instructions and I think it would help to have an audio file so that I can dictate their instructions.
I'm glad that you are finding uses for what we are covering in class, and a WIKI with embeded podcasts or screencasts would be excellent as a tool to assist students.
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