Collaborative Technologies

One of the many reasons that I love science is the exploration and discovery involved.  More than just a search for answers, science searches for reasons.  In real life scientists take a problem, learn about it, think about it, make hypothesis, test their hypothesis, reconfigure, test again, consult colleagues.  I always have my students preform a scientific investigation where they develop the hypothesis and decide how to test their hypothesis, what data to collect and how to collect it.  I usually have them work in small groups.  After reading in RSS for Educators about the use of wikis to increase productivity and how many organizations use it as an intranet I got the idea to use a wiki as a collaboration site for the investigative teams and a place where they could publish their findings for peer review.  Most often the groups have similar questions to start their investigations, though each group may be looking a the efects of different variables.  The use of a wiki would allow students to see what their classmates are doing, to share resources, and ask questions of each other.  The wiki allows the teacher to be aware of each groups progress every step of the way.  This would increase the chances of catching students who have gotten off topic or derailed in some other way and getting them back on track.  I really like the idea of having students "publish" their findings for peer review.  This would give them an introduction to publishing in professional journals.

This could be done for free with the free wikis out their since my students have access to laptops and wireless internet at school.  However, I think it would be good to look into some of the k12 subscription packages offered.  Wikispaces, for instance, has packages that cost $2000/year for a school or $4000/year for a district.  Both of these packages offer unlimited users, unlimited wikis, private wikis, SSL security, and single sign-on.  Being able to make a wiki private and secure would help with some of the issues about student privacy on the internet.  Single sign-on integrates wikispaces with an existing system so students could log-in through another already existing system.