I am relieved to find that we can access wikispaces from school! So now my district librarian and I are able to collaborate on a mini-program for our colleagues incorporating some of the concepts we’re learning through School Library Learning 2.0.

I decided to set up a wiki of my own to see how it works/how I like it. I must admit though that I have found wikispaces a tad confusing. I don’t know HOW it could be confusing to me, but for some reason it is! I’m in the process of watching the tutorials again to make sure I didn’t miss anything, and then I may just scratch what I’ve done and start over. I think I did something funky in the beginning and it’s made the architecture of my wiki weird. Working on it…it can’t be that hard! The whole idea is simplicity! I think it’s me.

I concur with many of my fellow SLL2.0 participants whose blogs I’ve read, in that Joyce Valenza’s blog post entitled Ten Reasons Why Your Next Pathfinder Should Be a Wiki really puts a practical face on wikis and why they’re really a perfect tool for teachers and librarians. I’ll have to periodically reread it as I get a little further into my year planning! I plan to introduce wikis to my older students as well, in the form of book reviews/discussion–especially in connection with our state reading program (Texas Bluebonnet Award) nominees.

I spent some time looking around a site that I’d read about in addition to the sites listed in SLL2.0: Curriki . Curriki calls itself the Global Education and Learning Community–it’s a Curriculum Wiki. I found a couple of really useful things here and here in just a few moments’ browsing, so I think this might be a site worth checking in on regularly as well & sharing with teachers.

To complete this Thing, a few other uses of a wiki in the school library setting:

• collaboration with teachers
• event planning (book fair, author visit, etc.) with both teachers and volunteers
• curriculum planning with fellow librarians at other schools
• book reviews by students/teachers
• pathfinders/resource lists
• any project necessitating collaboration!