Thing 8: Wiki Time

Wikis are amazing. I've been fascinated with them since I found about them when I was researching for grad school last summer. The idea that blew me away at the time was group note-taking. I also love how easy it is to modify wikis. In college I built websites using Netscape navigator, and while Wikispaces doesn't offer me all the same choices, it is a million times easier.
I use a wiki for my tenth graders to post analysis of the books they choose to read.
I don't allow kids to cite Wikipedia because it is usually very difficult to determine authorship. I encourage them to use it as a starting place for research, because many articles include links to credible sources. I worry about kids relying on Wikipedia for the same reason I worry about them relying on only encyclopedias: there's not a lot of depth, and it doesn't really encourage analysis.