I spent some time exploring Wikijunior today and it seems a great way to motivate kids into exploring the world of non fiction by great books on topics that interest them. I wasnt thrilled however, in the formatting of it. For example, when viewing it as a PDF it was a tedious chore to scroll each page. I did try other options, but I was wondering if there was one that I missed that actually read like a book. For example, when Im on Amazon and want to preview a book, it shows me the first few pages, and actually shows the page turning. Seems ridiculous I know, but I would enjoy more if it had the feel of a book as opposed to a slide show. I do like that others can add to each book, however, the skeptic in my does worry about misleading or incorrect information could appear on a book that a student has put their own name on. Is there a program that can be implemented that checks facts, or is this something the student would have to continually check themselves to verify information.
If anyone has used wikijunior to create a book - I'd love to hear how it worked out in your class. I have several students working on independent projects right now and it seems like it would be fun to correlate this with their work.
I checked out wikijunior too, a couple weeks ago, and I was totally turned off by it. It actually made me a little nervous to use wikis because it seemed like you needed to know computer code to use it, and I didn't. I liked the idea of allowing kids to add information to it, but in the end I decided it was too complicated and that I would just use wikispaces. I know where you're coming from.
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