Benefits

=**Benefits**=

**What can wikis do in the classroom?**
//Wiki projects shift emphasis from the teacher to the students, providing a navigable digital space for monitoring collaborative learning and creating opportunities for multiple literacy instruction.// //Wikis are ideal incubators for multimedia planning, instruction, and assessment with other educators and professionals within a wide network.//

__W____eb 2.0 Ready__: Wikis are easy to use and require no programming skill, but are very customizable if you know how to read and write code. Wikispaces plays well with other applications making sharing, social media, and folksonomy simple. Customizable permissions offer an accountable space for seed learning and collective intelligence to happen.

__Diversity Education__: The ability to share multimedia content with our local and global communities is a unique opportunity to learn about and from each other. Knowledge of digital citizenship can be easily embedded into a wiki lesson. By crossing reading, writing, visual and technology literacies, learners will observe diversity in a rich authentic experience.

__Reflective and Project-Based Learning__: Wikis are blank digital canvases where learners can create, share, collaborate, communicate, and self-assess. The ability to dialogue and reflect in the same space as the content empowers learners with an engaging multimedia experience. Wikis are a unique documentation of student learning and method of informing stakeholders.

__Collaborative Tool__: For all kinds of teachers and librarians, wikis are accessible collaborative tools allowing them to share resources in the same digital space as student work. Wiki access facilitates collaboration with the professionals and the movers and shakers within your school, district, state, and around the world. The un-scary interface and usability of Wikispaces could be the perfect ice-breaker in convincing a reluctant teacher.

__Incorporate Into Any Curriculum__: Integrating wiki technology is a great way to infuse new potential for learner comprehension and collaborative learning into any lesson plan. Here a few suggestions for lessons using a wiki:
 * Solving a math problem
 * Group research for a science project
 * Literary analysis
 * Art history report
 * Make a newspaper from a historical period
 * Tracking current events
 * Improve a service within the community
 * Create a neighborhood scavenger hunt
 * Understanding local weather
 * Following a nutrition or exercise plan
 * Write a screenplay in Spanish

Need inspiration? Check out Joyce Valenza's Bookleads wiki and Gwyneth Jones' The Daring Librarian wiki. Find more great examples of wikis for the classroom at 50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom and Educational Wikis.

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