Thing 9

Wiki #1 – “Mathematics Wikia”
http://math.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
Description:
Welcome to the Mathematics Wikia.
We are currently working on 323 articles in English. There are also companion wikis in other languages under development. Please support this project by adding content in whichever language you feel most comfortable.

My Thoughts on this site:
Site was mostly definitions and examples. Looks like it could be a good resource and possibly a way to connect to other teachers who are trying to teach math with technology.
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Wiki #2 – “PlanetMath”
http://planetmath.org/
Description:
PlanetMath is a virtual community which aims to help make mathematical knowledge more accessible. PlanetMath's content is created collaboratively: the main feature is the mathematics encyclopedia with entries written and reviewed by members. The entries are contributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL) in order to preserve the rights of both the authors and readers in a sensible way.

My Thoughts on this site:
The level of math being explored here is way beyond the middle school level. It did show that wikis are being used in higher level math to communicate mathematical proofs from one mathematician to another. Showed a very high level of collaboration which is a good thing for the world of math.
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Wiki #3 – “Math & Art Wiki”
http://mathforum.org/mathandart/index.php/Main_Page
Welcome to the Math & Art Wiki
Description:
We hope this will become a center for people exploring the connections between art and mathematics. Please add more material, edit what's here, and show and tell us what you are doing! To get started go to the New User Guide (bottom left) for information as to how to create an account; please add information about yourself on your user page. You can see who's here at this list of Math & Art People.

My Thoughts on this site:
Looks like something that I could also use as resource but I am having a hard time seeing how I could use it to actually teach math to my students.
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Best Description by far of what a wiki is and why someone would want to use it is found at commoncraft.com http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english After watching this short video I know that I will definitly use a wiki next year when planning all of my family gatherings (Grandma's 93rd b-day party, Thanksgiving, Christmas etc.) I might even start using one for my volunteer sign ups for an upcoming school event that I am running.

As far as I can tell Wikis are cool and they are great toold for organizing events, like the camping trip example in the common craft video. I see how they can be useful in subject areas like literature and social studies and other areas that require lots of research. But as far as 7th grade math goes. . . I'm not so sure I would have much use for it. Maybe if I were going to have the kids do a research project on a famous mathematician or if I decide to have them put together a project on real world math. This would be a great thing to do but I have to make sure that all those kiddos get through all of the math stuff that they are required to know by the end of the year before I can go jumping into anything like that. I would also worry that the kids would need to have email addresses to sign up for wikis. If that is the case then I can't use them with the kids at school since many of our kids don't have email addresses and they are not currently allowed to access or set up gmail at school. The firewall has it blocked for kids at all times. Boooo! I like the idea of a wiki but some of the them are pretty difficult to navigate and I am not sure that I would have the patience to teach 30 kids how to use one in a math class setting. It would probably be something that would take a minimum of 5 days of classtime which is not something that I have to give up at this point.

On an additional note. . .I set up a wiki a couple of months ago at a PD day where Ron was the presentor. It was easy but I have not used if for anything. Now I just need to go track it down for thing 10.