Once again I am gobsmacked by Richardson's hyperbole. The word "easy" in the title must refer to the difference between setting up a WIKI and getting a book contract with a major publisher--or professionally writing, editing, graphic designing, and publishing, or maybe building a Tsunami blocking machine--or a fix for the economy.... I have written newsletters, company magazines, brochures etc. and worked with a large staff of people with different areas of expertise and it took us weeks to put out a quality product. A WIKI is quicker and easier to produce than that, but is a whole different level of communication.
With that said, I am a big fan of WIKIs as a quickER way to disseminate organized and searchable resources for students. Wikipedia is a great example of a warehouse of information--but it is still daunting to plow through to get to the right box of content. I am often criticized for putting TOO MUCH info on line on teacherweb. A major challenge is finding an organizational structure that is user friendly to present volumes of resources that can help a motivated kid. The WIKI spaces tool we are using in this course is light years ahead of WIKIs I tried a few years ago. The WIKI now allows better graphics, and separate pages that hold formats that chunk material into usable pieces. The WIKI we create in this course makes the sort of info we posted on teacherweb much more user friendly.
The 20 hours of work I spent designing and converting info to a WIKI-friendy format were NOT spent in EASE. I would not likely have dug in and done it, at the expense of grading, (or maybe getting my nails done!) were it not for the push from this course. It will also NOT update itself. EASY is not really the word I would have chosen to describe this effort, but I do think the result will be welcomed and USED more by my students than the Teacherweb version.
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