On my Wiki way...

On my way exploring technologies this weeks assignment is to explore wiki's. I knew what one was, had used many of them, I mean who hasn't at least peeked at Wikipedia.. but had yet to create one of my own. I was unsure of what to create my wiki about and was thinking of doing one for my library with links to resources on different topics.
In the mean time... a history teacher and I have been developing a book assignment. Students are going to be divided into groups of five. Each group will read a different assigned book. Since technology has obviously been on my mind, I suggested rather than traditional book discussions we could have the students create a blog and have the discussion online. They would be graded according to a rubric we developed for their posts. Something like...1 point for agreeing with someone, 2 points for agreeing and then pointing to another example in the book, 3 points for commenting and providing a link to some other resource which adds a new perspective to the discussion. The only thing we were worried about was how to make sure the students had to read the book and think about what they had read. Even with the rubric, students could get by with reading sections of the book that were being discussed and kind of ignore the rest.
Then it hit me...a wiki! We could have the students create a "sparknotes" wiki for each book. The students could read the book and then create a sketch of the book including character analysis, a quiz, background information, paper topics and information about the author. Each student would sign up to be primarily responsible for one heading and be required to contribute to all of the headings.
The teacher liked the idea because he would be able to look at who and when the edits were being done. He also had the idea to post them to the library website, where they could be viewed by other students.
So the dilemma about my assignment has bee solved. I am going to setup the wiki for the assignment. I created a table of contents and created a page for each entry. I then added a brief description of "what we are looking for" and links to ideas and resources. Creating the wiki was easy, just create a login and you are on your way. As with anything you can get all caught up in designing it or just pick a template and start writing.