The Power of the Wiki

I'm amazed at the usefulness of a wiki to create a collaborative document. I was recently asked to part of a district science fair planning committee and to also do a presentation with a fellow teacher on probeware in the science classroom. I set up the private wikis in a few minutes, invited all the participants and within a couple of days our entire presentation was planned, edited and a list of items we needed was created. I set up email notification(and RSS) for changes to the wiki and was immediately able to see what had been added or deleted. Just an amazing tool for this type of planning. The science fair planning committee has our first minutes recorded in the discuss tab, and a draft e-mail that will go out to the district science educators was viewed and edited by a few of the participants. Unbelievably more efficient than sending a wack of e-mails. The only problem I for see is reluctance on the part of some to participate in this environment, I understand, not everyone can be on line 24/7. It's easy to miss a big chunk of what's going on if you only check your aggregator or email once a week.

Welcome

I teach middle school science and math in Richibucto, New Brunswick. I've been recently introduced to the blogosphere and the world of Education 2.0. So I have decided that I should stop lurking around actually try and produce something. Just a little background....Last year I attended a "Literacy and Learning for the 21st century" conference in Fredericton, where David Warlick was the keynote speaker. I was asked to prepare a small poster presentation on a project that my Grade 8 science class was beginning. I had not heard of wikis (other than wikipedia) , RSS feeds, technorati, second life, etc. Excited about these new tools for myself and my classroom, I started to learn as much as I could about what was happening in the Education 2.0 world. After leaving the conference a began creating a wiki https://fletcherwiki.wikispaces.com/ and I also created an account on classblogmeister, then I got a google account and began adding subscriptions to my google reader account. The learning is never ending and seems overwhelming at times. I am always looking for new and exciting projects to I am going to use this blog to post some of my experiences in this new environment.