Students use wikis to create Web page

Emily Spivey took a standard report and presentation assignment a step farther by creating a Web page about Antarctic wildlife, complete with charts and a photo slideshow.

Spivey, 10, a Hidden Lake Elementary School student, used the Wikispace Web site to create her page. A wiki is a Web page or collection of pages designed to allow anyone who accesses it to create or change content. Wikis are often used to create collaborative Web sites or community forum-type sites. A good example is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that allows a broad base of contributors to post and edit content.

“I liked it because I got to customize stuff and change the backgrounds,” Spivey said. “...I learned I could always make a wiki about anything and learned what I could do with it.”

Lavonda Senn, Spivey’s Learning in Collaboration (LinC) teacher, has been using wikis in her fifth grade classes to get her students acclimated to using technology. Senn said wikis are a great educational tool because their open-source nature makes them ideal for group work. Senn said Spivey’s gung-ho attitude to her project helped teach her class a lot about using wikis.

The Dothan City Schools have a high poverty rate and many of its students may not have computers at home. Senn said giving classroom assignments that involve computer skills may help students with little access to technology learn to use programs and machines that are ubiquitous in the modern economy.

“A lot of them don’t have computers at home and by doing this they’re exposed to a lot of things they might not ordinarily be exposed to,” she said.

Spivey showed off her work Monday during a presentation that allowed about 56 LinC students to share their work with classmates. Haley Baucom, 11, was impressed.

“It’s awesome,” she said. “We all had to make one and I think her’s is the best.”

Not all of the presentations were computer-based. Some students chose to make more theatrical presentations, such as Morgan Gunn, 9, who dressed up as Harriet Tubman for a Civil War project.

“I thought it would be unique and I wanted to do something a little out of the ordinary for my project,” she said.