In 2009 our school introduced the use of a wiki for communicating among staff when the school expanded. Before the introduction of the wiki we, as a staff used to communicate via email which was working out quite ok, annoying at times but not bad. (we only had a staff of about 25 and not everyone had something to say all the time). When we realized that our school would be expanding from our staff of 25 to about 50 we realized that email communication would not work so we thought that a wiki would work great. Admin section, each committee had a section, each school had a section and then there was the general staff section.
The wiki has been working great. I personally love it. I don’t have to worry about reading everyone’s comments unless I want to, I can communicate with the people on my committee’s without worrying about finding all their emails (especially when there is a new member). I can have certain forum posts (from administration) come straight to my email inbox. While doing all this I can track all the action items from all the other committees, as minutes from their meetings are posted.
The wiki has proven to be a very useful resource in keeping abreast of everything that’s happening within the school but at my own leisure. It also allows for transparency without having everyone get involved in decisions or meetings that they don’t want to get involved in, but still allowing them to have access to the information.
We have recently granted access to the PTO and they have their own forum. Our technology committee has also discussed the idea of having a student based wiki and have discussed hosting due to security and liability issues. Another teacher and I on the tech. committee have volunteered to pilot a class wiki for our final expedition in May. I will post how it goes.
This is it.
Where can I learn more about wikis?
Common Craft’s Video "wikis in Plain English": http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english
7 Things you should know about a wiki - Click Here
Iffeisha, I really love the idea of being able to use a wiki instead of email for communication. What you said about sifting through endless emails to find what you are looking for is such time waster.
ReplyDeleteOur school uses a wiki for troubleshooting with technology issues. It got to be so difficult for the tech team to deal with people stopping by their classrooms. Now multiple people can log on and deal with the staff problems at once.
ReplyDelete