Wiki+Ideas


 * 1) An annotated virtual library: listings and commentary on independent reading students have done throughout the year
 * 2) Collaborative book reviews or author studies
 * 3) An elementary class “encyclopedia” on a special topic, such as explorers or chronological history – to be continued and added to each year
 * 4) A virtual tour of a school as students study topics such as “our community” in junior high schools
 * 5) A travelogue from a field trip or an EOC (Education Outside Classroom) field trip that the class would have taken as a culmination of a unit of study.
 * 6) Detailed and illustrated descriptions of scientific or governmental processes: how a bill becomes a law, how mountains form, etc.
 * 7) A wiki “fan club” for you favorite author(s).
 * 8) Ngā tikanga o te marae - Marae customs- junior high school students share their family’s ways of preparing 'Thanksgiving dinne'r or celebrating birthdays (anonymously, of course) and compare them to practices in other cultures they read and learn about.

Wiki ideas for math

 * 1) A calculus wiki for those wicked-long problems so the class can collaborate on how to solve them (a “wicked wiki”?)
 * 2) A geometry wiki for students to share and rewrite proofs (a geometwiki?). What a great way to see the different approaches to the same problem!
 * 3) Applied math wiki: students write about and illustrate places where they actually used math to solve a problem.
 * 4) Procedures wiki: groups explain the steps to a mathematical procedure, such as factoring a polynomial or converting a decimal to a fraction.
 * 5) Pure numbers wiki: student illustrate numbers in as many ways possible: as graphics to count, as mathematical expressions, etc. Elementary students can show graphic illustrations of multiplication facts, for example.

Wiki ideas for science

 * 1) A student- made glossary of scientific terms with illustrations and definitions added by the class using original digital photos or those from other online Creative Commons sources, such as Flickr. Linking to separate pages with detailed information would allow the main glossary list to remain reasonably short.
 * 2) A taxonomy of living things with information about each branch as students study Biology over a full year.
 * 3) Designs of experiments (and resulting lab reports) for a chemistry class.
 * 4) Observations from field sites, such as water-testing in local streams, weather observations from across your state, or bird counts during migratory season. Collaborate with other schools.
 * 5) Detailed and illustrated descriptions of scientific processes: how mountains form, etc.
 * 6) A physics wiki for those wicked-long problems so the class can collaborate on how to solve them (a “wicked wiki”?)

Wiki ideas for social studies:

 * 1) A mock-debate between candidates, in wiki form (composed entirely based on research students have done on the candidate positions).
 * 2) A collaborative project with students in another location or all over the world: A day in the life of an American/Japanese/French/Brazilian/Mexican family. (This one would require finding contacts in other locations, of course).
 * 3) Detailed and illustrated descriptions of governmental processes: how a bill becomes a law, etc.
 * 4) A “fan club” for your favorite president(s) or famous female(s).
 * 5) A local history wiki, documenting historical buildings, events, and people within your community. Include interviews with those who can tell about events from the World War II era or the day the mill burned down, etc. Teachers could involve members of the community to add their input by signing up for “membership” in the wiki. This project could continue on for years and actually be a service to the community.
 * 6) A wiki for those in the community who served in the military (ANZAC). Students could interview them and photograph them, including students’ documentation and personal reflections on the interviews.
 * 7) A travel brochure wiki: use wikis to “advertise” for different literary, historical, or cultural locations and time periods: Dickens’ London, fourteenth century in Italy in Verona and Mantua ( Romeo and Juliet), The Oklahoma Territory, The Yukon during the Gold Rush, Ex-patriot Paris in the Twenties, etc.