Tool #6

A wiki allows people to work collaboratively without having a thousand meetings and without having to manage a paper trail (even electronically...data is centrally stored) to keep track of decisions that were made.
I really like the practicality of it, as well as the 7 deadly sins page on PBWorks (see link below)...

http://pbworks.com/team-collaboration

…a great way to help people understand the need to be more practical about teamwork and collaboration. I also think it is really good that everything is auditable such that any change that is made is recorded, so there is never an issue about who changed what, when, etc. This is the case w/ PBWorks, but I don’t know about other wikis.

Now, can we do this instead of having a meeting every other week in departments? Or are we going to be required to do face to face meetings regardless? It seems to me that if all can work, comment, make suggestions and edit, then that is a clear record of who is participating and who is not, so would there still be a need for weekly face to face meetings? I'm not an opponent, and I can see where you might need them occasionally, but I'm just sayin'...

I did like a lot of the ideas that I saw regarding how wikis could be used in the classroom, but again, because I am often pulling kids and working with them on a specific program, I'm not so sure how I'd fit it in. I could see its use for subject areas where I support facilitate (given there would be enough time in that classroom) and for math pull-out, but for reading the program is very specific, so I guess it would require reworking parts of the program in a way that would allow collaboration on the part of the students...where there's a will there's a way...