"will we wiki?"

This was a question I posed to my family via email about six months ago when I first heard/saw what wikis were about. I thought it would be a great way for us (my 10 siblings and myself who live in various locations around the state!) to keep in touch, share pictures/stories, plan family get-togethers etc. The result can be found here (yes, I use pbwiki too!). It's still very much a 'work in progress' (but I doubt that a wiki is every really 'finished'... is it??). So far we've used it to share photos of our kids as well as jokes and there's even a recipe page (you HAVE to try my sister's Toblerone slice - it's AMAZING!!!). I set up the sidebar with some instructions for those less 'techno-savvy' than myself (ha ha... right...) so they could add pages etc. themselves without too much trouble. In the future, there's the hope that our kids (some are primary and high school age) will be able to have their own pages and put up some of their work from school or just about anything else they want to share with their cousins etc. We're also hoping to have an annual 'get-together' which we may use a page on the wiki to plan - anyone can add comments or ideas on where we can go etc. We'll see where it goes in the future...

Anyway, having had some experience of setting up a wiki for personal use, I had a look at the ones listed in the Learning 2.0 activity and saw some uses there I'd not considered (i.e. 'choose your own adventure' story - interesting!). Something else that also became very clear to me was the importance of making the wiki 'look good' (so, yes, I thought I'd better go back to my family wiki and improve the look of it!). The Room 15 wiki, for example, was much easier to look through than the others and also had some interesting pages in there (there's even one for teachers!).

I can see wikis being very useful for students to publish their work in many different ways (i.e. text on a page or podcasting etc) and it also has the benefit of keeping it organised. I recall many occasions, teaching Studies of Religion and having the students work on groups to research part of a topic and then 'report back' to the rest of the class. This also involved getting copious copies of notes etc for the other groups in the class and general required huge amounts of time (which we didn't have!). Having the students do something similar in a wiki would be a fantastic way to save time as well as make the work accessible for other students as well. It is also accessible to anyone who has the internet at home (that would be most students these days? Or is that too big an assumption to make??). Another use could also be for groups within the school (i.e. St Vincent de Paul or Student Representative Council) to report on or give information about events or other things they were doing.... the possibilities are endless! And just makes me wish I could get back into it all sooner....

Off task?

Sorry if this is a little off task but...
I discovered how to make this really neat slideshow thing from a friend on Facebook and then worked out how to put it on my blog!
More pics of my kids - that's about all I take photos of these days!
I'll get back onto Learning 2.0 soon.... I promise!
If you'd like to have a go at it yourself, you can find it here.