How to Have Fun in Detention (and other interesting tidbits from our students)

There's a "wiki" for almost everything.

Many teachers know about wikipedia, the free online collaborative encyclopedia started in 2001 which has over ten million articles.

A "wiki" is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone to contribute or modify content. The value is derived from the concept of accuracy through collaboration: there lies an obvious danger when anyone can create and publish an article, but that danger is minimized when anyone else can modify that article. If you are new to "wikis" you might give wikipedia a try and look up a well-known subject to see how collaboration has created an accurate and worthwhile encyclopedic document.

There are "wikis" for almost everything. Wikimapia, for example, is an online editable map which attempts to describe any (every) place on Earth. Wikibooks is a collection of open-content textbooks that started in 2003. There is even a "Flu Wiki" that attempts to map and detail current confirmed cases of the human influenza virus H5N1.

Obviously, many "wikis" have become important beneficial sources of information for a wide variety of professionals.

Unfortunately, as with many aspects of the World Wide Web, there has grown a darker, negative side.

WikiHow is a collaborative writing project "to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual." The website's main page goes on to state that "with your edits, we can create a free resource that helps millions of people by offering solutions to the problems of everyday life." WikiHow currently contains 46,052 articles - written, edited, and maintained primarily by volunteers. The site urges the reader to "please join us by writing on a topic not yet covered, or editing an article that someone else has started."

And they have. By the thousands!

Do you think there might be a "how-to manual" for students who want to get out of detention?

Of course there is!

As educators we can take a peek at this Talk Your Way out of Detention wiki (apparently written by a student with some experience) to glimpse the "thinking" that goes on with some of our charges. The first of the eleven suggestions is for students to say to their teacher "Do you really want to spend more time with me after school than absolutely necessary?" Number four is simple: "cry." The wiki also includes a couple of "tips" and "warnings."

The wiki entries at wikiHow don't stop at simply talking one's way out of detention. There are also articles on "How to get a detention," "How to skip detentions," along with the ever-popular, "How to survive a detention," and even "How to have fun during a detention."

Reading these might bring a smile to your face. You'll read, for example, "Rumor has it that the best day to serve a detention is on a Thursday." And another tip might be more for the detention supervisor than for the student in detention: "Don't stare at the clock. It seems longer."

Wikis are gaining popularity among educators. The University of Maryland has created an entire course based upon the wiki concept for an honors course in Eukaryotic Genetics and Molecular Biology. Penn State has created a Rhetioric and Composition course using "Epoche Wiki."

For educators interested in using wikis in their classes, "Grow Your Wiki" by Stewart Mader is a great website for starters. Included is a section on wikis for K-12 Education, a section on "How to use a wiki to build a support knowledgebase" and even suggested books to read like "Using Wiki in Education."

When you're ready to give it a try, go to pbwiki, a website devoted to "Collaborative Learning for Your Classroom." There you can learn how to create your own free classroom wiki. They indicated that "PBwiki hosts more classroom wikis than anyone else in the world, and lets you create a simple, secure wiki in about 60 seconds. Wikis drive engagement and collaboration. A wiki is a live, evolving document - but gives you user tracking and access controls to monitor your wiki at all times."

As one person commented: "When students write a paper, they're usually only writing for their teacher. When they know their peers will read what they write, students care and they try harder."

Take a look at what one class did for a project on Apartheid and the song "We didn't start the fire" by Billy Joel.