Okay, at this point I am starting to feel overwhelmed by the number of technology-driven tools out there. I didn't feel that way until I delved into the Wikis assignment, however. I watched the instructional video (edit-write-save; new page-link) and read the overview of Wikis suggested in the assignment (simple, joint, and fully-collaborative web publishing). Then I clicked on the "Classroom Wikis to Check Out" and waded into the fray checking out among other links, wikipatterns.com. A number of times I was stymied by "sign in" requests - I suppose the wikis were private. I tried a link for astronomy teachers - thought that would be good - but the link was no longer operable. Then I proceeded onto the Springfield Township Virtual Library wiki and tried a number of links there as well. At educationalwikis.wikispaces.com I came across a number of interesting wikis including "Free Stuff for Science Teachers" (which I will definitely be visiting again) and "Kimistry" written as an educational tool wiki for chemistry and biology teachers by someone named Kim - very clever.
After searching through the aforementioned links in the assignment, I set up my free educator account at Wikispaces Educator, making sure to set the wiki permissions to "private". My wiki is a list of things to do in the garden - since that's what I've been concentrating on at home this week. A wiki like that could turn into what we used to see in the newsappaer on a weekly basis - a gardening column reminding people of what they should be planting, pruning, deadheading, watching out for(pests, diseases) and so on. I could see a wiki with this purpose being used by a garden club or simply by a group of friends.
At this time, I suppose I prefer the Google Docs to Wikis at present perhaps because I have been using Google Docs (in a very limited fashion) for this course. I can see, however, with some group assignments/projects that either would work exceptionally well as a collaborative tool for students.
