Talent champion role & Students writing their own text book

I was quite interested to read how you could use wiki's in a class. I have already thought about how you could use a collaborative wiki for the group to contribute to perhaps for one particular subject. I think it would be easier for me to use this in a group tutorial slot as sometimes we have an IT computer room. I think initially it would be necessary for me to guide the students in contributing to the resource. I think we would also need to discuss the point of it and rules of engagement etc. I think it would be necessary to provide some sort of structure to keep it focused and to provide a valuable resource at the end of it. Although the book does talk about making sure you don't police the collaborative wiki too much as it can stiffle inovation and students don't value it as much pg 61 "teachers who impose a lot of right and wrong on the process can undermine the tool" Richardson 2009:61

The author describes how the students begin to "teach each other" I'm very interested in this aspect as students seem to really enjoy teaching each other and taking the role of the teacher so this could work. Ultimately I suppose the students over a year could have all contributed to a 'year book' of their studies which would certainly be something for them to digitally keep for lots of different reasons. To show to a prospective employer how they have been able to collaborate and what exactly they have learnt. As it is digital it could perhaps be attached electronically to application forms etc? this is something I will have to explore further.

I think there may be an opportunity already on the college's BB which I will look into first, no point in reinventing the wheel. Another aspect of this collaborative writing I'm pretty sure could be linked to functional skills? It would be possible to perhaps vet all entries before students posted them or talk as a group about grammar and punctuation. This is somthing I have just recently become aware of when I have now started blogging. The minute you look at the readers view of the blog you notice typo's and all sorts of things.

I think I could also use the wiki with other staff members to collect and share good practice. All tutors of the same subject being able to add or highlight areas already added which they don't agree with to discuss in meetings etc. This would help with standardisation for the IV process within the department

The pedagogy of the wiki is also somthing I would like to explore further as there is not much detail in the book about this although there is for weblogs and it does give a url (http://tinyurl.com/2zu6fb)